Cool Dude

I’m very pleased to tell you that my son is a ladies man.  He may only be five months old, but he’s already got some serious moves, and he’s definitely the most popular dude in our Mommy and Me classes.  Call me shallow if you will, but I’m incredibly relieved that the Muffin Man seems to be headed for a more promising adolescent social standing than either of his parents.  After the trauma of my own teenage years as a borderline social reject, I feared that I would end up raising a child destined for the outer limits of the high school social strata.  There’s nothing wrong with being a nerd or a dweeb or a loser, in fact, many of us go on to do very great things with our lives (myself, not so much.  Bill Gates, however, is a real nerd-makes-good), but as a Mother I sincerely hope to spare my child the pain and self-loathing that goes hand in hand with not being one of the cool kids. 

One of my very real fears, from the moment I found out I was pregnant, was that my own inherent nerdiness would be a hindrance to Noah’s being a cool kid.  Despite the fact that I am now comfortable with who I am and not concerned with being “cool”, I worried that my quirkiness (which, let’s be honest, is just a nicer way of saying weird) would mean that other Moms wouldn’t want to hang out with me and, by extension, Noah.  I know we all like to pretend that adulthood makes everyone equal, but let’s not bullshit each other here, there are still popular and unpopular people, it’s just that now they have more expensive clothes and better haircuts. 

Well, dear reader, the joke is on me.  It turns out that people no longer see me as a loser.  Despite the fact that I sometimes look in the mirror and see the gangly girl with a unibrow, a mullet, and an intact hymen, that’s no longer who I am.  Thanks to an excellent eyebrow waxer, hairdresser and multiple sexual partners, I’ve somehow morphed into the Mommy that other women want to hang out with.  I’m sure it helps that Noah is seriously the cutest little boy ever, but I think I do have to give myself some credit for managing to not let my freak flag fly at inappropriate times.  Maybe in my old age (and let’s face it, I’m an old Mommy) I’ve become more comfortable in my skin and I spend less time worrying about what other people think.  I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of it has to do with feeling truly loved and valued by my husband, so I’m no longer measuring myself against the girls who have boyfriends.  Or perhaps it’s that ever since I gave birth to Noah, I just really don’t give a shit anymore.  When you’re exhausted and overwhelmed and doing your best just to get through the day, everything else ceases to matter.  And in the end I think that’s what separated the popular girls from us unpopular ones; they all seemed to float through life and school unaffected by what others thought of them.  So I guess at the ripe old age of 30-something I’ve finally become the girl I always wanted to be.

I’m looking forward to watching Noah grow and change into the man he’s going to become.  I have a feeling we’re going to be spending a small fortune buying the kid condoms in 14 years or so, which is just fine with me.  But I do think Noah’s father needs to have a talk with him about only touching girls when they invite him to, because he’s been getting a little fresh with the hot Japanese ladies in his Mommy and Me class lately.