In a past life, my primary (only) job was as a tennis instructor. This job taught me two things. One, little girls are golden. They do what you say with big, bright, adoring eyes and giggle and jump around and wrap you around their little fingers. Two, little boys are terrors. Based on this information, I decided pretty early on that I wanted to have daughters. I mean seriously ... look at the picture below (from about 2002) and tell me that I could’ve come to any other conclusion. Welllllllll ... now that Hadley is pushing 12, I’m comfortable saying that I’m mighty happy I didn’t have four of them. Why? I’m glad you asked ...
In Hadley’s world (in other words, in our world), there is one right way to do most things. And that is precisely how Hadley wants them done. The problem, more often than not, is figuring out just exactly how Hadley wants things done. There are countless examples. Her “big” (i.e., end-of-the-morning-clues-hidden-all-over-the-house-scavenger-hunt) gift for Christmas this year was a small box filled with clothes-related gift cards. She was super-excited. Then Paige took her to the mall and after spending two hours at Aeropostale and Justice and wherever else she had bought like one shirt because she just couldn’t find anything else that was “right.” Several things have been acquired since then, but I have no doubt that she still has at least half of the de facto money left. She is not particularly easy to please where stuff like that is concerned.
The annual birthday party extravaganza is another good example. This year, with 12 weeks of attempted advance planning (complete with linear programming models and critical path analysis), we’re still no closer to having things together. And her birthday is Thursday. Yes, two days from now. Granted, part of the problem involves competing schedules of her friends and end-of-season soccer complications, but still ... that’s just an excuse for what probably would be the reality anyway. So at this point we’re still at ... maybe we should do this or have people over for a sleepover on that day or have SOME people over but not others because OMG not everybody gets along anymore and maybe we should eat pizza and go bowling and see a movie and then go ding-dong-ditching or I don’t know maybe we should just hang out at the house and watch movies here and bake cookies and eat junk and go roll somebody and stay up all night or how about we go to the mall and then go get pedicures together but no I don’t think so because that’s what we did last year and what if nobody LIKES what I want to do so maybe I just won’t do anything at all this year because like it is SO HARD!!
Loudsigh .............
Of course what she REALLY wanted to do this year was to rent a limo and go to Houston and play hotel tag. Yes, for her 12th birthday. Can you imagine being this person’s boyfriend? Anyway, this post isn’t specifically about presents or birthdays. It’s just little slices of our reality that will give you some indication of Hadley’s View of the World. I’ll now provide a few examples from this past week that further showcase the Sweetie Princess in action.
A couple nights ago, Reagan was practicing for his Bodega gig. For those of you who don’t know about this, he’s donating all of the proceeds from his May 1 gig to Allyssa for her mission trip to Africa. So come out and see him and support a good cause. Anyway, Reagan’s PA system is perpetually set up in our piano room / library / living room #2 area and he runs through stuff for about 45 minutes every night. Hadley was sitting in there pretty much rocking out to him last night -- which was sort of unusual, because she has said in the past that she doesn’t really like his singing that much. She’s entitled to her opinion, of course, but that has always puzzled me a bit because I think he does a solid job (particularly for a high school student) and I most emphatically DO NOT look at his music through rose-colored glasses. I’m as critical of his stuff as I am of my own, and that is saying something. Having seen Hadley seemingly enjoying Reagan’s set, Paige asked her if she did, in fact, like it. Her response was “Yeah ... I like his songs. But he just doesn’t sound right. I mean he doesn’t sound like the Jonas Brothers.”
So apparently there is precisely One Sound that conforms to Hadley’s View of the World and it corresponds to the Jonas Brothers.
On a related note, while we were driving to Conroe for soccer this past weekend I was tormenting Hadley by only occasionally allowing her to listen to Radio Disney. It’s rather a fun game. Not as fun as when Hunter is in the car with us and I’m specifically LETTING her listen to Radio Disney to torment him, mind you, but fun nonetheless. During one of these non-Disney spaces, a cool 80s early alt-punk song by The Violent Femmes came on the First Wave station. Remember? Do ya?
After about 10 seconds the following conversation ensued:
Hadley: Wow.
Me: What?
Hadley: That guy CANNOT sing.
Hadley: That guy CANNOT sing.
Me: Yeah, I know ... his voice isn’t great but it’s kind of a cool song.
Hadley: Kind of a WEIRD song.
Me: You don’t like it?
Hadley: He TOTALLY needs some pitch correction software.
Yeah. Totally.
I mean seriously. Can you imagine how much better Bob Dylan would’ve been if he had just had that too-perfectly-coming-straight-out-of-a-computer sound? I have made the point before that pitch correction software (e.g., Autotune) marks the downfall of Western Society. The proliferation of nuclear weapons or whatever other societal bane you want to pick would run a very distant second in my book. Remember Milli Vanilli? Remember when people got all up in arms when they admitted to lip-syncing ALL of their stuff? There was practically blood in the streets. Now you can’t be a pop sensation without sounding like (rather, BEING) a computer accompanied by infinitely compressed audio that gives the music no space to breathe whatsoever.
Y’know, in my day we had to walk to school in the snow ... uphill ... both ways ... and yes, I most definitely cannot wait to be the old man in the wifebeater and the pants pulled up to his chest who is shaking his fist at the young hooligans who are walking across the corner of his lawn.
Where were we? Oh yeah.
Observation #3 comes from a note that Hadley was supposed to write to apologize for what presumably was “bad behavior” on the bus yesterday. This sorta surprised me because Hadley typically is absolutely terrified of being accused of doing something wrong. Like nervous breakdown and what-will-everybody-think-of-me-if-I-am-that-type-of-person terrified. Last semester she was borderline hysterical because she made a comment about the bus driver while she and Hunter were walking back to the house and she suddenly had the ridiculous idea that maybe the bus driver heard her. Meanwhile the bus driver is 50 yards away. Inside the bus. Driving it. With the motor on. And the door closed.
Whatever the case, here is her actual note:
I don’t deserve to get a referral for “violation of safety rules” because I was not completely out of my seat and I was in my seat for a majority of the time. For “failure to remain seated”, I was in my seat sitting ... it just didn’t look like it at times. And Victoria was doing it too. For “unacceptable language”, what the heck? Caleb was being extremely annoying. I couldn’t help it! (Editor’s Note: She told Caleb to shutup.) For “refusing to obey the bus driver”, I wasn’t refusing to obey the bus driver. I didn’t do anything that bad. That’s kind of like the title of ALL of these excuses. For “other unacceptable behavior”, when I said the “R” word (Editor’s Note: “retard”) I was just telling a good helpful story that my English teacher was telling the class. I was just trying to tell people not to say that word.
Moral of the story? It might be possible for The Sweetie Princess to be wrong / at fault / anything other than dead solid perfect at all times, but the odds of that happening would seem to be rather low. (Editor’s Note: Paige made her re-write the note in an appropriately apologetic tone.)
In closing, I should note that I only feel the freedom to rag on Hadley like this because we have a very, very good relationship. As Main Soccer Driver, I spend a tremendous amount of time with her. She’s super-appreciative of everything I do. Examples? She always wants to know where I want to go eat after games, etc., and she’ll never go somewhere just because she wants to go there. If I’m even lukewarm on it, she’ll pick something else. While she can be mightily hard to please, she thanks me every time I do anything for her -- no matter how small. So what we have going works, and works in a big way.
Maybe it’s because I almost always bring her something from Jamba Juice or DQ after practice (which makes the other girls think I am just about the coolest dad ever). Or maybe it’s because I never say “no” when she asks me (daily) to please go outside and throw the football with her. Yes, you read that right. Or maybe it’s just because we got super-lucky and just happen to have four kids who all seem to really, really, really like hanging out with us.
I suspect that’s it.
And for that I am muchly grateful.
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