“Your hair is so dark… I mean, it still looks good though.” This, then, how my mom greets me as I walk in. I don’t expect anything different, of course. Which is fortunate, since throughout the day that I learn that I have a very small waist (too bad about the rest of me, that is) and that I am so successful because God has blessed me so very much.
Normally, I just let it all go, but I took a stab at the being blessed thing. “Or maybe I worked really hard.”
She thought about this.
“Lots of people work really hard. But not everyone is successful.” (Translation in case you don’t fluently speak the language of my mom: she works really hard. So hard! And yet why is she broke all the time?!) And anyway, she asked me, don’t I like what I do? Well then. I can barely count it as working. Most people aren’t so blessed as to enjoy their work.
I just took a drink of my margarita in response.
I got off lucky though. Hannah Montana didn’t fare so well.
Hannah arrived at my niece’s sixth birthday party with hula hoops, a karaoke machine, pom poms and face paint. You can imagine the excitement of all the little girls, right? They gathered around her with anticipation. As did my mom.
“Wow, great job. You look just like her. Last time I saw you, you looked just like Snow White!” Hannah and I both gave her the same look. That look was “what the hell is wrong with you, you crazy woman?”
I explained to my mother in front of THE EXCITED GROUP OF SIX YEAR OLD GIRLS that the reason she looked like Hannah Montana was that that SHE WAS HANNAH MONTANA. My mom looked confused. “But the girl we talked to before..?”
“You must mean my friend,” Hannah explained, clearly bewildered by a grandmother trying to destroy her own granddaughter’s magical birthday surprise and replace it with the hard, cruel reality of our cold and bitter world. Should Hannah tear off her clothes and start singing about how she can’t be tamed while we’re at it?
My mom wandered off and found my sister. “Did you know that’s not the same girl we hired? They must have sent someone else.”
She approved of Hannah’s blonde wig though.