One of the Cool Moms?

I was the kind of kid who worried about a lot of stuff.  Most of it seems pretty silly now.  One of the many things that I worried about is that I would grow up to be an uncool mom.  Nobody wanted an uncool mom, what an embarrassment!  One of those moms who wore mom jeans, had a weird haircut, and had no idea what songs were on the radio.  I promised myself to stay current on pop music, and keep up with trends.  How hard could it be?

I started off okay, being pretty cool in the 80's.  It wasn't very hard either.  I loved MTV, big permed hair, and was all about the shoulder pads.  I even wore Sally Jessie Rafael glasses.  We were up on all the new gadgets, having a microwave, a VCR, and an electric typewriter.  Things were pretty good.  So, what went wrong?

Life happens, as they say, and before I knew it I had become all the things that I had feared, and more.  Interestingly, as life was happening, so was the fact that I didn't seem to care anymore.  More importantly, I don't think that my kids minded either.  Maybe moms weren't supposed to be all that cool.  They did make fun of the way I dance and sing along to music, but never in a bad way.  

They each took the time to make playlists of some of their music that they thought that I'd like.  And I loved it.  I'm not sure if it made me cool, but not too many moms knew all the words to "Pretty Fly for a White Guy" . . . but I did, thanks to Ike.  Whitney gave me what she called her "Sunshine Mix" with a wide variety of fun songs, and Tom burned a playlist of "Viking Metal" that remains a favorite.  Brigette loved Paul Simon, so that was a no-brainer.

Last Mother's Day, I spent the day listening to playlists that reminded me of each of my kids.  It filled me with such a happy feeling.  A feeling far better than that of being simply "cool".