Tuesday, April 27, 2004

READY OR NOT
It's coming. I don't know when, but I know it's coming.

It's been quietly lurking in the back of the closet and on the playground. It sneaks through books on tip-toe and flashes across the movie screen. Maybe it thinks I can't see it, or have been too busy to notice. But I know. I've been watching and waiting. Certainly not with excitement, but not with any real sense of dread, either. Seeing as how it is an inevitability, I'm attempting to remain calm, cool and collected.

Puberty, I see you.

Sidebar -- First, if you thought I was talking about menopause, please raise your hand and then smack yourself upside your head. Second, a fair warning. The rest of this post contains words which would be censored in public libraries, deleted by The Internet Nanny and could be considered fine-worthy by the FCC. Puberty isn't for the faint of heart.

I've been gently preparing for this cataclysmic upheaval for awhile. Last fall I got TinyTuna a book and a journal so she could approach the topic at her own pace. She was really interested in it for awhile, but then set it aside for other things. Lately, though, she has been picking it up again -- reading and writing.

Puberty, I see you.

Last night we needed to do a quick shopping run. As I was finishing with the ads, TinyTuna looked at me and asked, "what's on the list?"

"Not much," I said. "Milk, juice, bread, cheese, tomatoes, snacks for your class..."

"What's this?" she asked, peering at the list.

"Razors," I answered.

"For what?"

"For shaving my legs."

"Ugh! You have hairy legs?"

"Not after I shave them."

"Will I get hairy legs?"

"Yep. And pits too."

"You shave your pits?"

"Yes."

"Will I have to do that too?"

"Well, yes, unless you want hairy armpits."

And then...She makes a classic Grade-A supreme MPF and says, "Ewww....like daddy?"

Ahh, children. They are your comfort and light in your old age. They bring you joy, and sometimes say things that are so damn funny, tears run down your face, you lose the ability to speak and it takes several minutes to regain any sense of dignity and composure you may have once enjoyed....

Puberty, I see you.

But then I forgot. We were nearly done shopping and bras were on sale, which means time to buy. As I was looking through the racks, TinyTuna asks, "why do you need these anyway?"

I give her the look of DUH and say "to hold them up." This statement is accompanied by the two-handed international sign of "holding them up."

"They hold you up?"

"Yes. They keep your breasts supported."

TinyTuna looks at me and smashes both hands on her chest and gives me the international flat-as-a-pancake sign of "I ain't got none" and says, "I don't have anything to hold up."

"Not yet," I say. "But you will. You will get older and you will grow breasts."

"Well," she says matter of factly, "I don't mind growing these, but I just don't want hairy pits."

"Them's the breaks," I chuckle. "Hairy pits and breasts. You have to take the good with the bad."

Puberty, I see you. Now, go play in traffic.
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