Now I am painfully aware of the fact that most of my readers and fellow bloggers are younger than I am. And so, having taken a few more rotations around the treadmill of life, I feel it's my constitutional duty to warn you of the perils and pitfalls lurking upon the parental road ahead (you know, kind of like a public service announcement.) And this is precisely why I want you all to start practicing a certain maneuver now:
You need to become unwinceable.
That's right, go stand in front of the bathroom mirror, take a deep breath, and pretend that someone is lobbing hand grenades at you. . . or plastering a big old x on your heart and using you for target practice . . . or better yet, stabbing you with the little pins that practitioners of voodoo and acupuncture use.
Yeah, just like that. . .
Now practice being unwinceable in the face of all that fear, shock and pain.
Because, my friends, if you have any hope of getting out of your child's teenage years with your dignity in tact, you have to master the art of appearing nonplussed when your child's friend's mother says, By golly! That application to Harvard was terribly cumbersome this year! Was it not??? even though you both know that the flesh-of-your-flesh-and-bone-of-your-bone is not Ivy League material.
Likewise of course, you must remain stoic when another mother quips, Those poor senior citizens in the nursing home sooooooo appreciated that visit the church youth group made, didn't they??? even though both she and you know that your child hasn't seen the inside of a church since you last dragged her there kicking and screaming.
But above all else, you must train yourself to remain totally unwinceable , unflinchable, and unflappable when your sister starts a sentence with, I was reading the police blotter the other day. . .
You now have my permission
to refer to me as the unwinceable. . .
