When I was a kid my dad told me my epidermis was showing and I looked about myself to see what I was exposing to the world.  After a few moments of enjoyment at my puzzlement over what I was showing, my dad clued me in to the meaning of the word – my epidermis is my skin.  A typical hardy-har-har dad thing to say – so lame.

Yet, here I am a good four decades later and I used the same line on Cheyenne.  I can’t recall exactly how hold I was when my dad sprung it on me, but my guess is that I was 11 or 12.  Apparently, schools teach things earlier these days than when I was in school.  Cheyenne knew immediately what epidermis was and looked at me when I uttered it with a silly grin on my face with a mixture of disdain and pity.

When I tried to salvage my dignity by telling her that it would have been really funny if she hadn’t known what epidermis is she just rolled her eyes as if to say – so lame.  The whole line – preserved for all those years in my mind, delivered with zeal and primed to create my own personal glee – was an epic fail (which, should you be outside the tween vocabulary at this juncture in your life, means a BIG failure not worthy of just the word fail – my failure was EPIC).

I wonder if Cheyenne will remember this line decades from now and use it on her kids.  I wonder if this type of parental lameness is part of the circle of life.  I wonder if  she will ever walk a mile in my parental shoes and see the eye rolls when she talks, be perceived as lame and feel the let down when her efforts at good-natured humor likewise fall flat.  Only then do I suppose she will understand that even if I did seem totally lame most times when I opened my mouth during her tween and teenage years, I kept doing whatever I could to keep the communication lines open.

Seeing as I am on the front end of Cheyenne’s teenage years I predict I have many more epic fails in my future…let’s see how many other lame things I can come up with. 😉

Day six hundred and fifty-seven of the new forty – obla di obla da

Ms. C