Saved! By a little perspective...

I often feel like Margaret Mead, observing a culture utterly unlike my own. Except I am not in Samoa, and the observee is my own child. She loves all things girly, she loves hair (both her own and anyone else's), she loves anything that seems grown-up and adult and female. She still loves to dress up, squeezing herself into her ballet costume from 2 years ago and shoehorning her feet into her red glitter shoes that are two sizes too small, hobbling around the house for a few minutes, and then tearing them off.

She has this fascination with make up, even though I don't wear any. Where does this COME from?? Remember, ladies and gentlemen, this is a child with NO television, she has never seen a Disney movie (thank god), we have no Barbies, no Slutz dolls, no play make up or curling irons or, well, anything that might be girly and plastic and fun. None of it darkens our doorstep. Right now she has a fascination with what she calls "showing up lipstick" which means that with color, not the regular old boring Chapstik that we use daily. Two night ago I was on the phone with my sister, Flipper's adored "Aunt Kafrin," and listening to a play-by-play of wildlife sightings near the Tetons. Our conversation went like this:

Kathryn: "WAIT!! I SEE A MOOSE! No, I mean an elk. WAIT!! It really IS a moose!! Let me pull over...OK! I got it! Where's Flipper?"

Me: "Oh, I don't know, somewhere around here. What do you see now?"

Kathryn: "WAIT!! A whole herd of BISON!! They're running..I didn't know they could run!!"

ME: "All animals can run. I think."

Flipper: "Mommeeee..." (Annoying whine that means she has done something she knows she shouldn't but can't hide/fix it on her own and so reluctantly comes to me)

Me: "What on earth is on your mouth?!?!?"

Kathryn: "What is it? WAIT! Another elk!!

Flipper: "It's magic marker, but it is the washing off kind but I can't wash it off!!"

Me: "FLIPPER'S MOUTH IS COLORED WITH PERMANENT MARKER!!" (a hideous, frightful purply-pink)

Kathryn: "Oh, it's not that big of a deal...WAIT!! Where's my camera?"

Me: "It IS a big deal!! It looks terrible, what if it doesn't come off, why would she do something like this? She knows she's not supposed to...

Kathryn: "Oh, it is just one of those things kids do!! Remember when we emptied our beanbags onto the living room floor?"

Me: silence

And with that little reminder, Flipper was saved. This incident remains in the forefront of our brains, because it was one of the rare times our mom really came close to losing it/killing us. My parents are uncommonly good at gift-giving, and that Christmas my father pulled down the attic stairs and two large, lime-green vinyl beanbags came tumbling down. We were thrilled. I mean REALLY thrilled. It felt like such a grown-up present, a piece of furniture, if you will, and when you are 7 or 8, a beanbag definitely counts as "furniture." We loved these things, so much so that they went on long road trips with us; we sat on them in the back of our huge Dodge van (the dog got the middle seat). Oh, the days before seat belts...
At any rate, on one nice day, my mother left us alone to go somewhere-I think to play tennis, and made the fatal mistake of coming home early. Why fatal? Because we found out that beanbags are filled with about ten jillion teeny Styrofoam beads, and our bags together created a sea of beads about 8 inches thick in the living room. We were giddy with delight, kicking up huge sprays of the tiny beads, and we were just settling down to figure out the best way to get them BACK into the zippered opening, one that probably should have been made childproof, when the door opened, and in she came, into a previously neat and tidy living room that was now covered with Styrofoam. And staticky Styrofoam at that-it clung defiantly to every surface, to every piece of furniture, to our hands, to the dustpan...neither one of us can remember how long it took to put them all back...but I do know that we never did it again. It was, indeed, one of those things kids do. Flipper will undoubtedly do things just like this, although I think the lack of a partner in crime might make her crimes fall more into the "misdemeanor" category instead of our more-frequent "felonies." And upon remembering, I left Kathryn to her attempts to chase down a rumored bear eating an elk carcass, and helped Flipper wash it off. Most of it.