Belonging...

I've been thinking about a couple of different things that I think are related.

It started with all of the "news" stories about 6-7. It's something kids say. And apparently it was messing with people's heads. What does it mean? Why are they doing it? Should we be concerned? Should we call the minister? There's a TikTok thing as well where they juggle their hands back and forth as they say it. Which to me, when I saw it, made perfect sense as to what they are saying.

More or less. Mid. Meh. Not great but not bad. Mas o menos. Six of one, half dozen of the other. 6-7.

There's probably nuance in there that I'm missing, but, and this is important, I don't care. I don't have an 8 year old so I'm not hearing it 17 times a day. And even if I was it would still be firmly in the yeet, yolo, whatevs, loooOOOser, bin of life. I don't care much about the slang of today, or last year, or last decade. I'm still, like, firmly ensconced with my own slang, no?

And as I was thinking about it, I don't remember, aside from being driven absolutely bonkers by the number of times we all said the word like, the adults of my childhood really cared about our slang. They had other things that were more important than that.

Parents today can get way too involved in their kids' lives. It started when Katie was younger. The first helicopter generation of parents arrived. And I get it, I do. It was a direct result of how little supervision we got growing up. And the things we did that then when we had our own kids terrified us that they would do. So we hovered. And by we, I mean them. Brent and I were definitely more involved in Katie's life than our own parents were in ours, but we weren't helicopter parents. Katie once said we were disinterestedly interested. We wanted to know what she thought, what she was doing, who she was hanging out with, but did not need to be involved in any of the middle school and high school drama. We didn't need to also be using the most current slang or dressing in the most current trends. We wanted to be there for her, but assumed she was doing at least a few things that we wouldn't want to know about but were mostly harmless.

But that slang, those fashions, the games they played, the music they listened to, it was all group marking. You are part of this group. As it's always been. Brent and I were not part of that group, we were of the olds and had our own markers. Gray hair and wrinkles and out of date fashion and playlists. What.Ever.

You would think we would outgrow that but...

Think about the short story I posted a few months ago. About the woman going to Florida to wreak havoc. She was getting plastic surgery to mark herself as part of that group. The Mar-a-Lago Face. The Republican Woman ®️

And if you experiment with your own face you can see how it happens. If you pull your skin back like you are getting a drastic face lift it pulls your lips out and flat, so you have to then add fillers to your lips to get them to look somewhat lip like again. And then once that's done your cheeks look weirdly flat so you have to get filler or implants in them. So you end up with that sort of tight rounded face with little circle cheeks and really full lips. And then the ideal body is dieted and exercised to the thinnest possible proportion but then you miss your boobs so you have to get implants there as well, and what size did everyone else get? Let's get those. And then viola...you look like everyone else and not at all like you used to.

Congratulations?

Which, I mean, I would guess they all do think they look great. Everyone around them looks like them so obviously it's the way to look. I grew up in the 80s and people are BRUTAL about our fashion choices and wonder why nobody told us. But there was nothing to tell. We all dressed that way, so we all thought we looked great. And a part of me still thinks most of it looks pretty cute. It's what we all did. It was part of our group marking.

So 6-7, Mar-a-Lago Face, parachute pants, it's all part of belonging. A way of saying I'm part of this. You're with me. It marks a group. We understand each other. We think the same things are cute. We share plastic surgeons.

People like to belong. We're pack animals. We like our groups.

So if your kids are driving you nuts with their slang or their fashions choices just take a deep breath and know that it's probably temporary and they will have new words and new looks soon enough. If your mother is restructuring her face to match her friends, maybe be a little more concerned and talk to her about the volume of Fox Newsish she's been watching.

Everyone likes to feel like they belong.

And sometimes it's a good warning to others. A red hat is like red stripes on a snake. It might not be dangerous, but best to proceed with caution.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to crimp my hair and put on my blackest black eyeliner...