The Cool Mom

There is an upside to being in the Navy when the downside is that your life gets completely uprooted and moved to a new and unfamiliar location, and that is this: a few of your friends are usually already living in the strange new location, feeling quite uprooted themselves and anxiously waiting for some familiar faces to appear in town.

My friend Rachel drove up from Chesapeake this morning to hang out and spend some 'girl time' with me and it was lovely.  I haven't seen her since she and her hubs left Charleston about six months ago.

I enjoy being friends with Rachel because we're very similar in some respects: intolerant, funny, sarcastic, impatient and easily annoyed by stupidity.  It's refreshing to be around someone who doesn't look at me askance when I make a sarcastic comment about the man walking by wearing a pair of Chucks and fringed leather chaps because she's just as disturbed as me.

We grabbed a coffee at Starbucks and then drove to check out the mall near my house.  It's not ginormous but it turned out to be mucho nicer than the shitty mall back in North Charleston.  More brownie points for Virginia.

When I'm at the mall, I like to window-shop and people-watch.  I really only go to the mall in the hopes of spotting some wicked good clearance sales or some really big freak shows.  If I have the good fortune to discover both, I'm as happy as a fat kid with a lollipop.

I was browsing the clearance racks in American Eagle when my sixth sense kicked in and I got that funny, prickly, skin-crawly sensation that someone was watching me.  I looked up and glanced around.  Nothing.  Then I noticed a red-haired woman on other side of the clothing rack, who was partially hidden behind a big box of sunglasses and who kept staring at me every few seconds.  I stared her down until she finally looked away and then continued perusing the clearance sweaters on the rack.

The red-haired woman kept staring at me as she inched her way around the rack, talking to a girl who looked to be about 15 years old and who I assumed to be her daughter.  "Here, how about this sweater?  This one's super cute," she said to the girl as she held the sweater up against her own body.  "No, I don't like it, it's a, uh... bad color for you," the girl replied.  Red looked miffed, dug for a few seconds, stared in my direction again and then held up a pink sequined spaghetti-strap number.  "How about this one?"  "Mom, it's like a... a... it's like a clubbing shirt.  I don't think that would look good on you."  Red looked down her nose at her daughter, sniffed in disgust and put the shirt back on the rack.  "Well, then what?  Help me find something.  Just nothing big or baggy or ugly."

And then I figured it out.

Red was trying vainly to be "The Cool Mom."  The type of Cool Mom who is desperately trying to hang on to the illusion that she can still pass for 29, and who doesn't want people to know that she's a mom or that she's old enough to have a fifteen year-old daughter.

I moved away to a different rack and eyed her inconspicuously. (Unlike her, I've mastered the art  of people-watching and can watch people without being rude and without them even realizing it.)  She was in her late thirties, maybe early forties.  She was neither skinny nor fat and had a pretty decent-looking figure considering her age (yep, I just went there; and yes, I'm well aware that karma's a bitch and that in ten or fifteen years some snarky little 28 year-old will probably say that about me.)


I looked at her a bit more closely.  She was wearing stilettos, low-rise flare jeans and a low-cut "say hello to the girls" babydoll tee that was much too tight (her figure wasn't that decent).  Her red hair was obviously not natural and was fashionably cut and highlighted.  She turned to say something to her daughter and I noticed that her face looked really... I dunno, taut.  Too much Botox or something.  She didn't have any crow's feet, but she also looked like she couldn't blink.  Her eye makeup was much too dark, heavy and glammed-up for a Sunday afternoon outing at the mall.

She looked ridiculous.  She looked like a pathetic woman going through a mid-life crisis  and attempting to pass as her daughter's older sister instead of her mom.  Her daughter was obviously trying to steer her away from the Junior Girls clothing without being mean or causing a scene.  It was sad, really.   I've often given my mom shit about some of her frumpier 'mom attire,' but thank God that I don't have a mother that looks like Teenybopper Prostitute Midge.  I think the next time I see my mom wearing a Christmas sweatshirt with fake snow and red bows glued on to it, I'll let it slide.

Rachel emerged from the dressing room a moment later and we made our way to the counter with our purchases.  Red wandered over to the line opposite from us at the other counter, her arms full of clothes and her daughter tagging along empty-handed behind her (I can only hope that at least some of the clothes were for her kid).  As we waited in line, Rachel suddenly turned towards me and said quietly under her breath, "Why does that woman over there with the red hair keep staring at us?  Do you see her?  What the hell is her problem?"

"Dude, I don't know," I replied, "I think maybe she's just jealous?"

I don't care how old you are, dressing to look younger is always okay as long as you also dress with some class and style.  A forty year-old dressing like a skank because she thinks it makes her look 20 is never okay.  Period.  The End.