My 20 year old daughter is working at a restaurant and has to wear all black. So she went out and bought some flat black shoes that were a little dressier than her normal tennis shoes or flip flops. She was getting ready to go out the door the other day and she pulled up her socks and said, "Look, I'm wearing 'mom socks.'" She had borrowed a pair of my trouser socks to go with her new dressier shoes. All she owns are athletic socks. She said, "I guess I'll have to go out and buy my own 'mom socks' now." There was an audible sigh.
Let me take you back a few years. She was in junior high and my friend Martha and I had taken her to shop for a needy family for Christmas that our office sponsored. We did it every year and we thought this year she was old enough to help us out with picking out the items for the family. We always chose a family of five and we purchased outfits and items that the profile said the family needed.
There was a teenage girl in the profile this year. So Martha and I sent my daughter off to find something on the list as we chose socks for the family. We spent quite a bit of time discussing the options of socks for the teenage girl. We were quite aware of the whole "mom sock" theory that my daughter would denounce us with on a regular basis. They had to be just right. We thought we did a great job weighing what we thought were mom socks vs teenage socks. We wanted to show my daughter how "in" we were. All my daughter could say was, "Oh my God! Those are 'mom socks." She then put them back and picked out something else. She could not have any teenager wear something they might be ridiculed in. I think at that moment in time it didn't really matter which socks we picked. We were just lame in every way. I accepted that, and proudly wore my mom socks anyways.
But to hear my daughter say at age 20 that she had borrowed my mom socks and was going to purchase her own, made me think that maybe she was on her way to being that adult she once thought was so lame. Funny how a simple sock can be a precursor for adulthood.
No comments:
Post a Comment