Category Archives: Attempted Parenting - Page 2

My Daughter Is Smarter Than Me

There comes a time in every parent’s life when it becomes evident that they obviously did everything right, because their child is high-five calibre smart.

Well, I guess maybe this doesn’t happen to parents of stupid children, but I digress.

I need no reminder that my teenage daughter Gwen Junior is one smart-ass kid (both figuratively and literally), but a text message this morning was a pleasant reminder that she seriously rocks the casbah.

There’s a poster on the subway that I noticed a few weeks ago, and I couldn’t help but laugh because it’s just so tacky. It’s an ad for a no-frills funeral service here in Toronto. I remember laughing about reading such a depressing ad on the way to work every morning, and even took a picture of it:

This morning, I received a text message from my daughter, who was on her way to school. It read:

Funerals have finally become affordable. ”improving on the traditional through convenience and affordable choices” whoever made this ttc poster needs to go back to school.

I knew right away what poster she was talking about, but spent a few minutes wondering why she thought the ad designer should “go back to school” based on that line (which, although you may not be able to see it in my photo, is in the gold bar). Then, it hit me: she thinks the grammar’s bad!

See, the way I initially read it, “convenience and affordable choices” sounded okay, because the convenience of the service and the affordable choices it offered were mutually exclusive. But evidently, my daughter felt that “convenient and affordable choices” was the correct way to go about it, illustrating that the choices were convenient as well as affordable. Which… makes total sense.

It could be argued that both ways are technically correct, but this illustrates that my daughter can, and does, explore alternate and improved ways of expressing one’s thoughts and intentions. Which I think is fucking awesome. So I replied with a ‘Omg ur right, it should be “convenient and affordable choices’. Good eye!” and spent the rest of the morning basking in my obvious superiority as a parent and all-round human being.

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Those Kids and Their Silly Jibber Jabber

Posted by gwenstyles on January 18, 2011 4 comments

Sometimes I feel silly writing parenting blog posts. Mostly because they’re about my teenage daughter, and I am fully aware of the fact that I am way too young to have a teenage daughter. But I have her, and like it or not*, she’s here to stay.

Despite my beauty and youth, however, I am often made to feel old and out of touch by many elements of my daughter’s day-to-day life. One such element in my apparent loss of fashion sense – the childish fantasies I had of sharing a wardrobe with my someday daughter never came to pass, mostly because I wouldn’t be caught dead in what she likes (and vice versa, I’m sure, but I’m pretty hot so I don’t worry about it that much).

What’s really made me feel a million years old recently though is the slang I hear coming out of her face. It’s just so stupid that I want to eat nails. Here are a few examples:

Legit. Legit is a word that teenagers nowadays are using in inappropriate contexts, to emphasize the… legitimacy of their statements. For instance: “Okay so when I got off the bus I legit stepped in a puddle,” or “that boy is such a nerd, he legit plays chess in the caf.”

Awks. Abbreviation for the word awkward. Often used in its place, or on it’s own as a one-word indicator of just how ridiculously fucking awkward they are, feel or consider the situation to be.

ROFL. Now we all know what this means on the internet – Rolling on the Floor Laughing. It’s been around since day one. But what you might not know is that kids are now verbally saying ROFL instead of actually rolling on the floor laughing. They pronounce it “raw-full“. They usually say it with a straight face to demonstrate how “scene” they are and then get very angry when you implement Operation ROFL’s Plan B (forced rolling/laughing by way of armpit tickle).

Loafting. I actually overheard my daughter use this term (via eavesdropping) a few weeks ago in a discussion with her girlfriend about how lazy said girlfriend’s boyfriend’s best friend’s little sister is. “Everytime I see her at school she’s just loafting around in the halls…” was as much as she was able to get out of her mouth before I burst through the door and demanded to know what the hell that stupid word meant. She looked at me like I was a third-grade dropout and replied, “it’s not even slang, Mom. Look it up. It means a slothful person who just bums around doing nothing.” I stared at her in disbelief before replying, “DO YOU MEAN LOAFING? IS THAT THE WORD YOU MEAN? YOUR ENTIRE SHIT-FOR-BRAINS GENERATION ADDED A SUPERFLUOUS LETTER T TO A PERFECTLY FUNCTIONAL WORD AND YOU’RE LOOKING AT ME LIKE I’M THE CRAZY ONE? Blahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

True. Another real word used inappropriately, most often to convey assent or agreement. Me: “Gwen Junior, your turquoise Manic Panic hair dye has stained the bathroom sink. Go scrub it right now or you can’t go on the internet.” Gwen Junior: “True.”

Someday, I’ll be cool again – when my daughter’s my age and she’s busy freaking out over how stupid her kids sound. Silly kids and their jibber jabber. Back in my day…

* Most of the time I like it… she’s generally pretty rad.

Here’s What I Think

Posted by gwenstyles on December 21, 2010 1 comment

So my teenage daughter and I had a wee skerfuffle today, and she dropped a couple of F-bombs. Not one to let anger get the better of me, I simply replied as follows:

This accomplished a few things: it broke the tension, it gave me the opportunity to teach her the meaning of a couple of new words (linguistic and inarticulate, the latter of which she guessed on her own with some prompting of course), and it allowed me to share a rare bit of wisdom with her: that there are far more intelligent ways of making one’s displeasure known.

Now if only I could practice what I preach :)

The Ghost of Christmas Past

Posted by gwenstyles on December 11, 2010 1 comment

When I was a kid, Christmas was always a really big deal. We started decorating early – usually by the first week of December the farm house was all decked out in tacky holiday glory. My dad kept every single bullshit kindergarten painting I did, and up on the walls with masking tape went my blue snowflakes, bonhommes de neige, fat ugly reindeer and mangers.

Yes, mangers. Because I’m Catholic. Well, sort of. I kind of feel like God himself will strike me dead with a lightning bolt every time I tell someone I’m Catholic, because I figure he’s probably pretty pissed that I would dare call myself that. I haven’t stepped foot in a confessional since I was thirteen years old, I had a brief dalliance with paganism inspired by a teenage crush on Neve Campbell, and since my early twenties have laughingly suggested to likeminded thinkers and shocked churchgoers alike that I’d rather believe in Santa than God because I’ve never gotten a My Little Pony doll from the big man upstairs.

But I digress. Where was I? Right, Christmas.

Growing up on the farm in Northern Ontario, Christmas was very much a family affair. Grandma and Grandpa lived next door, and none of the aunts, uncles and cousins were more than a half hour away, so we spent every holiday together. We’d have supper at Grandma’s, then play upstairs with our cousins (more on our naughty shenanigans another day), and around eleven at night, everyone piled into their cars and a convoy of Styleses went to midnight mass.

What was midnight mass like? Don’t ask me, little girls like me were never able to stay awake. I expect it was worse in my church, too… it being French-Canadian and Catholic, there was actually quite a bit of Latin prayer and hymns. Kids who can’t understand what’s going on can’t pay attention. They either misbehave or fall asleep, and since corporal punishment in church wasn’t really unusual, I was one of the latter.

When my dad carried us into the house after mass, we sleepily had a bedtime snack while my parents set out the cookies and milk for Santa, and the carrots and bowl of sugar for the reindeer. Then we went off to bed. For us, there was never any of that can’t-sleep Christmas Eve anticipation.

Hey, parents: want your kids to stop driving you crazy Christmas Eve with their inability and/or unwillingness to shut up and go to sleep already so you can have one goddamn drink to stave off the complete festive bullshit your life has become? Dudes, make them go to church at midnight. For serious.

Christmas is different now. My ex was allergic to tack, so I’ve really had to rein in my wild trailer park decorating ways. Gone are the multicoloured lights, plastic Santa Clauses, snowman candles, red and green doilies, paper chain steamers, pre-lit lawn ornaments, four-foot musical trumpeting angel, and sentinel front door candy canes of my childhood, and heaven help me should anyone catch me listening to Christmas carols on the radio. While our current, grown-up holiday decor is understated, classy and quite beautiful, I do long for the trailer trashy days of yore.

Well, sometimes I long for them. Otherwise I remember how truly tacky and hideous it all looked and am glad for my classy 7′ slim Tuscan pine decorated in a simple and elegant red-and-gold scheme and clear twinkle lights, my beautiful poinsetta arrangements, and my lovely collection of vintage Christmas cocktail napkins from the 60′s.

Still, though, I wonder if I’d still be the only one in the house with an ounce of Christmas spirit if things weren’t just a little… in your face.