The Fonz is Cool (and So Am I)

It’s official. The votes have been counted, the decision has been made, and the award has been presented.

I’m officially "Totally Uncool."

The committee that gave me this award is the same group of children that have, for the past fourteen years, regularly given me the coveted, "Meanest Mom in the World" position, so you can see that they are thoughtful and discerning. (It has recently come to my attention that there may be other mothers who are also receiving that particular designation, so perhaps it’s not as prestigious as I once believed.)

But unlike my previous award, which I was actually rather smug about, this new title has left me sputtering and indignant. How can they say I’m not cool? What right do they have to insist that I am not up on popular culture? I bet a lot of people think ‘Abercrombie and Fitch’ is a law firm.

Yes, it’s true that I thought Jessica and Ashley Simpson were two of Marge and Homer’s animated children. And maybe I should have realized sooner that Paris Hilton is not a hotel that shows up in the news a lot. And, okay, perhaps I looked a little foolish when I said, in answer to a teen who told me that he really liked YouTube, that I hadn’t heard their newest album yet.

But, come on! Me, uncool? Out of it? I can play the first part of "Stairway to Heaven" on the guitar. I know how to play record albums backward to hear subversive messages. I can find bad words hidden in the ice cubes in magazine ads. Hey, I can do Rubik’s Cube!

Apparently, so my sources tell me, the things that made a person cool in the 70s and 80s don’t cut it anymore. It’s a new century – a whole new millennium – and my poor kids have to live with a mother who doesn’t even text message.

It is a normal, almost required part of growing up to be embarrassed by your parents. (I remember being horrified at the thought of my friends seeing me with my mother, but that was completely different. She really wasn’t cool.) Still, it’s ironic that these kids who think I’m embarrassing are the same children whose hands I used to have to hold tightly when we went out so that they wouldn’t publicly demonstrate that the contents of their noses could be used as a source of food.

So, I’m taking this "uncool" business in stride. I’ve been around long enough to know that everything comes back around, if you wait long enough. Like that purple suede mini skirt that my aunt kept in the back of her closet for thirty years until it was in style again, my day will come. At some point in the future, there will be a real demand for a person who can tell you the members of the group Wham!, can curl her hair so it looks like Farrah’s, and who knows that if you have a pink and gray plaid wool skirt, you should wear a gray blouse and a pink sweater vest with it. Oh, and the blouse should have a big bow at the neck.

Oh, yes, my day will come again. So I’m not a cool mom. Maybe I can manage to be a really groovy great-grandmother.

Ah, the 1980s: Perhaps not the best-looking decade for many of us