Very often I will have vivid flashbacks to my childhood, of
which some revolve around Mother's behaviour. You may have been under the
impression that somehow Mother has developed her unique sense of self in the
past few years, however this is untrue. It concerns me that you are not as well
educated as you could be, regarding Mother and therefore I would like to
include little trips down memory lane throughout this blog. I do hope you enjoy
them and then, possibly, contact your own parents and thank them for their more
customary existence.
....
Around the age of ... 10 (I think) Mother dated a guy (we'll
call him M). I never got attached to the various gentlemen (or, on occasion,
teenage boys) she associated herself with. However, M just so happened to be
the father of my best friend during primary school - to the delight of my
friend and I. Obviously we were practically sisters at this point. Even more
exciting was that we had all planned a vacation to stay in my Auntie and
Uncle's villa in Spain. My friend (we'll call her G) and I spent every single break time at school for
the months preceding the holiday acting out activities we had planned to do on
the trip. Right down to the outfits we would choose.
Now, here we reach the box labelled 'Things my friends could do but I couldn't'. Not in a sob-story,
medical condition way. Not in a passive-aggressive way either.
Being a 90's kid, I recall those white baseball-style
t-shirts; the ones with the bubblegum girl printed on the front, with the 3/4
length sleeves in red or blue or pink etc. (I have tried searching for this
style of pre-teen fashion statement but to no avail. To help you; think back to
chunky sneakers, elastic fake-tattoo chokers, roll-on body glitter, stick on
earrings etc).
I had wanted one of these shirts for about three years. 'G'
had about five (and piles of roll-on body glitter. She also had her ears
already pierced and was basically 2 cool 4 skl). I begged Mother to buy me one
of these tops but, every year, I was put back in my place with these words;
"No! I've told you, those are not for you, darling. They are common! They are for the common
girls at school! You are NOT common and I do not buy your clothes from Tammy
Girl!! Tiffany's mother may well want her daughter to look like that but I do
NOT! Look at your cardigan, darling! Do you think that was from the high
street? It most certainly was NOT. That's lilac cashmere, don't you know? It's
from Monsoon! It was very expensive darling. Those sequined slippers you're
wearing were imported from Thailand so if you think I'm going to let you wear
some hideous tomboy polyester rubbish then you've got another think coming. We'll go to Harvey Nichols this weekend and
find you something nice from Kenzo."
So, there we have it. A 90's kid - very much able to
submerge myself into the era only by trying on all of G's clothes at
sleepovers.
xoxo
