“Why don’t you ever write about me?” my 13-year-old daughter demanded last weekend. She had just read a lovely letter praising her younger sister for being a good sport – I had bragged on the little one in the last Traffic Report – and she was feeling left out.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Mostly because you’re 13, and I didn’t want to embarrass you. Also,” I said, my voice lowering down to where it was barely audible, “You’re not very funny.”
She tossed her long hair over her shoulder.
“I am hilarious,” she said, and turned on her heel and exited the kitchen.
Writing about your family is hard. Apparently, they have feelings, and when you make fun of them, they get hurt.
“I can’t believe you wrote that I cried,” complained the younger one.
“Your article about me was mean-spirited,” my husband declared.
“I’m trying to write a humor column about my family!” I yelled. “I’m exaggerating!” (No I’m not.)
My husband got mad at me a couple weeks ago after I had written some not-so-sensitive things about him. The next morning, he came downstairs and looked at me.
By Sarah Mansheim Managing Editor • Mountain Messenger
“You ever heard of Phyllis Diller?” he asked.
“Yes!” I exclaimed. “That’s what I’m trying to do! Make fun of you just like she made fun of her husband Fang! It’s funny! I don’t really mean some of the things I say.”
He walked out of the room shaking his head. “Poor Fang,” he said.
The previous evening I had promised him, in a fit of apology, that I wouldn’t write about him anymore. That I was so sorry and I had never meant to hurt his feelings. But then, I got indignant.
“I have fans, you know! How am I supposed to write a humor column about my family if I can’t write about you?”
And now, my 13-year-old daughter (young teens being the very definition of volatile sensitivity) wants me to write about her. At least maybe she does. Later on that evening, the night she had asked me to write about her, she came into my bedroom and flopped on the bed.
“You probably shouldn’t write about me anyway. You’d probably just write about how I never clean my room or do the dishes,” she said.
“Well, then go do the dishes!”
“Mom!”
• • •
So, what can you say about a 13-year-old girl? She’s beautiful and kind, graceful and strong, with lily white skin and long red hair. She has all the confidence in the world, and, like her sister, is willing to try out for everything, and usually gets it. I would have hated her when I was her age. She says she’s really funny – all her friends say so. But, how would I know?
She’s closed that door to me. We talk, yes, about little things and big things, dinner and boys, clothes and eating disorders. But, we don’t joke. We don’t chat. Those boisterous conversations are reserved for her friends. When she has a friend over, I hear the gales of laughter bursting from her room, but when I walk in, I am met with solemn silence. Our relationship, at this point, has little room for silliness or laughter. Our transactions are more limited to the currency of needs and wants, shoulds and shouldn’ts, wills and won’ts.
That is not to say that she isn’t the world to me. That I don’t gaze at her and notice her blossoming beauty. That I’m not awed by the grace with which she moves. Because she is, I do and I am. It’s not that. It’s just that…
I’m so sorry, but it’s just that she’s. Just. Not. Funny.