Hip to be square.

This morning my 8 year old daughter handed me a homemade card; inside she had scrawled the words.....
To Mum
I Love You
You're Cool!
It was a really nice thing to receive and it made me feel all warm and fuzzy.....trouble is it's not true. I am not cool. I never have been - I probably never will be. Daggy is my middle name, well not literally but you know what I mean.

My clothes aren't remotely fashionable. Most of them are at least five years old and are in varying degrees of shabbiness. Maternity bras and nursing tops are de-rigueur - although I stopped nursing quite some time ago. Occasionally I will buy something that is new, shiny and beautiful. I will get it home, try it on.....and look like an idiot.
On my last birthday I bought myself a hat, it was gorgeous and very cool. Trouble is if there is one thing worse than a perpetually uncool person - it's a perpetually uncool person trying to be cool. Which is exactly what I looked like.

I listen to daggy music...most of it dating back to circa 1980's - 1990's. Ask me what music is "in" today and you'll be met with a blank stare. My younger sister - who is reasonably knowledgable about such things - is continually exasperated with my lack of musical kudos. She spouts off names of various "artists", groups and music festivals - she could be speaking another language for all I know.

Speaking of different languages did a new one get invented while I wasn't looking? Generally it seems to occur in places such as facebook, twitter or when people text one another. Peppering conversations with LOL's, BFF, ROFL and IYKYIM. I [of course] have no idea what anyone is talking about! Is this some cool way of communicating that technologically defunct people, such as myself, have been excluded from?

Another area where I suffer from a complete lack of understanding is Television. When my friends all chat about the latest happenings on the latest shows I smile and nod and pretend I know exactly what they're all talking about; "Oh yes!" I enthuse, "I just loooved that episode of Blah-Blah when Whatshisname kissed Whateverhernameis - it was awesome!" The absolute truth is that once the kiddies are in bed and I've cleaned up the catastrophe that is my house I usually crawl into bed with a book - and a dorky one at that.

So, having my daughter hand me a card that declared that I was "cool" made me feel distinctly special. In a matter of a few short years she will undoubtedly see me for the fraud I am - but until then I am going to enjoy the kudos of being momentarily, briefly, barely......cool.