Grumplestiltskin

There are so many incredible things about being a parent. Even if you aren’t a parent, you can probably rattle a half dozen of them off the top of your head. There’s watching them take their first steps, saying “Mama” for the first time, taking them to their first days of school, and so many little things too. They learn constantly. They ask fantastic questions. Even when you don’t think they are paying attention, they are watching, then maybe imitating, but with their own interpretive twist. It’s like they are little aliens trying their best to imitate human beings. Like…when your two year old son waits until you leave the room and then carefully opens your tube of mascara…and applies it lovingly to his ears.

They are so open to possibilities. The entire world is foreign and new. Until you show them what a sandwich is, they have NO IDEA what a sandwich is, or what a dog is, or what snow feels like. You know what else they don’t know? That there is no such thing as an “Ice Cat”, which you may or may not have made up one day, when talking about the one cat more ferocious than a Saber Tooth Tiger that is NOT extinct, and still roams around in the arctic wilderness. You might even have forgotten that you talked about “Ice Cats” at all, until one of them starts talking authoritatively about their existence while riding around in the car…say even last week…and you had to stifle your surprise and laughter over the entire escapade.

Do not judge.

I got this way honestly, I swear. I was one of those kids once too, and I had a diabolical super genius for a father, that apparently had the same sense of humor that I do. It’s genetic. I know this because in seventh grade science, Mr. Bowen, my mushroom loving teacher, taught us all about vestigial tails. This was all new information to me. The idea that people could be born with tails was one of those bits of information that wracks your entire understanding of THE WAY THINGS WORK. I was astonished. Gobsmacked. That evening, sitting in the family room with my parents while they simultaneously read the paper, watched the news and sipped Manhattans, I relayed this new tidbit of information with the breathless chatter you can only muster under extreme moments of life changing excitement. Acting completely nonplussed, my father waits for me to finish and offers only, “You were born with a tail.”

WHAT?!?!?!?!

He went on to tell me that said tail had been surgically removed when I was a baby, and that if I checked, I could probably see the scar from the procedure on my lower back. Oh, I checked. I bought it hook, line and sinker. I bought all of it. I was so convinced that I was born with a tail, that even went to my bff and confessed this new found deep dark secret to her, to lift just a bit of the shame of this burden. Again, this was in seventh grade.

I believed it until I was in college.

Only a few years ago, I told my dad about how I had believed his tail tale for so many years. At first he seemed a bit confused, trying to remember what exactly he had told me. Then as it all came back, I recognized the same reaction I had when my kids started talking to me about the infamous and ferocious “Ice Cat”, a look both heartily amused and quite proud.