Tonight I took Serena on a Mommy/Daughter date. We went to the mall and the movies. Then we topped off the night with sushi at Ra, where the slogan is something like 'Everything tastes better in the Ra'.
This admission about her crush was a major victory for me! I never told my parents what I was up to when I was a kid. I never felt comfortable. (Mostly because my mom would ask 'Is he Mormon? Who's his bishop?')
My dad used to say, "You can't control who you fall in love with. You have to be careful." So my parents insisted I only have crushes on Mormon boys. If I happened to be crushin' on a 'non-member' I would rather die a slow painful death than admit the truth. (Luckily, I ended up with a great guy who ALSO happened to be a good lil Mormon boy.)
Back to Serena:
"So I have a crush...."
"Oh yeah?" I say as casually as possible. "What's his name?"
"Tyler."
"What does he look like?"
"He's brown."
"How brown?"
"Does it matter?!"
"No. I just wanna know what the kid looks like," I said.
"He's Mexican brown... But Mom... he is SO funny!"
I smiled. "I used to really like the brown boys too." She giggled. "Does he have a cute face? Is he taller than you?"
"Mom! Except for Turner, I'm the tallest kid in my class! Tyler goes up to my chin. And I don't care if he's cute! He's FUNNY!"
"I think you should like Turner. He's cute. I like him." This was met with an eye roll. In my defense, Turner is half black half white (quite handsome), super smart and athletic. I'm just sayin'... "Does Tyler know you like him?"
"Ugh! Yeah! Because Layla told Turner to tell Tyler I liked him this morning! But then I was embarrassed so Layla went back and told Turner to tell Tyler 'SHE IS OVER IT!'."
I laughed. "So this morning you let Tyler you know you liked him. And by the afternoon you said 'I'm over it'? AWESOME! I am SO proud of you!"
"Huh? Why?"
"Boys will like you more if you act like you kinda like them but then don't like them that much anymore. If you say 'I'm over it' the boy will suddenly not WANT you to be over it. It's called 'playing hard to get'."
"That is SO weird!"
Our bus boy coincidentally sold me these blue glasses at Metropark a few days ago so he was kinda chatty. He introduced himself as Tommy.
"Those glasses actually look good! When you bought them I didn't think you'd ever wear them out," said Tommy. Then He turned to Serena. "Your mom is right, by the way. The other thing that works is if you're really mean to the guy you like. Then he'll really dig you."
Serena just furrowed her brow and shook her head. After Tommy left she said, "Tommy likes talking to you."
"Tommy is an 18 year old kid, honey. He's just being nice."
"I don't know, Mom. He probably thinks you're really young, like 28 or something."
"I'm 33! It's not THAT much older than 28!" I said.
"Mmmk. Whatever you say."
Awesome. I'm so glad we had this little chat.
