Am I Cool Enough for Mom Jeans?

 

My freshman year of high school, my mom drove me to school while beating out her favorite song at the time by Chumbawamba, which had a chorus that went something like “Pissin’ the night away, I’m pissin’ the night away.” If you’ve never heard it, check it out and you will instantly feel my pain. There was my sweet, Italian mother, singing loudly and cheerfully out the window as we pulled up to the drop off area of my Private Catholic high school. It was humiliating.

My dad, due to the hours he worked, sometimes had to pick us up from school in his giant blue PG&E work truck. This was not cool. If we were whining, he would loudly say, “Do you want me to give you something to cry about?” Well, I’m already crying, so… If I couldn’t fix something he would tell me I needed to be “smarter than what I was working with” and when he took me to the father-daughter dance my senior year of high school, he was a better dancer than me. People actually cleared the floor and tried to see who his daughter was. They couldn’t figure out why he was dancing with me all evening (I do a dance that can only be likened to Elaine from Seinfeld, it appears as though I may be having a mild seizure). Again, mildly embarrassing.

In my eyes my parents were not cool, nor had they ever been.

The other day while trying on a new pair of jeans at a local department store, my friend turned to me, color draining from her face, and gasped “God no! Why is your ass crack that long?!? Are those mom jeans???” You know the kind; they are pulled up to just under your boobs, and make your hips look like you’ve just shoplifted a small country down to your crotch.

I couldn’t believe it. My son is not even two, and I’m in mom jeans already? This can’t be. I’m cool. As I checked my jeans out in the mirror, hands down the most unflattering thing I’ve seen on my body since a neon pink and green track suit I owned in the 80s covered with different members of New Kids on the Block, I came to a startling realization maybe my kids will think I’m not cool.

As I drove home with my son in the car seat, me singing ‘Bust a Move’ to my heart’s content, both of us bobbing to the beat, I tried to remember when I first thought my parents had lost their own version of cool. In all respects they are attractive, intelligent, fun individuals who apparently had a real good time in both high school and college, but I never thought of them with that adjective in mind: cool.

My parents spent every waking minute with us (my 3 siblings and myself) growing up. Something that is difficult to do, but one of the only ways you can ensure your kids are not up to anything. I never saw them drink, they never went out without us, and all vacations were taken together.

I was 13 when I started having them drop me off a block away from my destination. I couldn’t bear the thought of being seen with them. These people clothed me, loved me, helped me with my homework and were a hell of a lot of fun, but I was at the age where I couldn’t allow people to know we were related. They were just not cool. Thankfully, I grew out of that, but it took me having a son to see it for myself.

Because, you know what? Parents aren’t cool. They shouldn’t be; they don’t have to. I don’t want to be the “cool mom” from Mean Girls - “You kids need any condoms? Alcohol?” I want my kids to only know the version of myself that I create for them. “I got straight A’s and never went to one party, always came home by curfew, never dated…”

So, I’m zipping my mom jeans up to my chest, rolling the windows down, and “now you know what to do go bust a move.”