Comment MM


It’s all in the mix


As parents, we all know that there’s a slight gap between what we say and what we do… but, as MM’s editor points out…sometimes it’s not so much a ‘slight gap’ as a gaping chasm!


By Debbie Orme


The other day my daughter returned home from school with the usual ten-minute diatribe on earth-shattering subjects such as being omitted from the ‘inner circle’ of cool girls and not being invited to join in with the daily hormone-fuelled girly rant. I dutifully listened – as always – throwing


in the odd ‘oh, I know’ and ‘you must have been’ and ‘absolutely!’ as and where appropriate. Once the diatribe had worn itself out, I fell into the mummy talk about ‘joining in’, ‘mixing easily’ and ‘going with the flow’. Even as I sounded out from on high,


though, I was transported back to my younger days when I was socially gauche. While I had friends who mixed so easily they could have been Kenwood Blenders, I found it difficult to make friends and was at times socially isolated. A friend was regaling me recently about


how her son is so popular that he has ‘700 friends on Facebook’ (almost prompting me to ask how come he was sitting on his own in his bedroom!), but I managed to restrain myself. After all, I thought, I sat in mine with letters from 36 penfriends. Was it really all that different? After all, penfriends were only one step up from invisible ones and that was a real no-go area… Each week, as I sat in my Wendy House with the three legs, I’d read about the


fantastic lives that my ‘friends’ around the world were having. The conversations were riveting. ‘Hello,’ said Miguel from Mexico, ‘how is


your taller?’ Once I’d explained that ‘my taller’ was


four feet eleven, it was all downhill from there on. Then there was Pier Luigi, who, like me,


was thirteen and a half – and who lived in Rome. (I’d actually applied to be a penfriend to his 16-year-old brother Carlos, who was drop-dead gorgeous, but who obviously had found a real life, and had passed me on to his younger sibling. Suffice to say, it wasn’t hard to see who had been hit with the ugly stick in their house…). When it came to social activities, ie,


actually going out, I didn’t fare much better. My two-month Brownie venture was eventually ended when I was laughed out of the pack by a Leprechaun for wearing a faux leather waistcoat and frilly blouse (not my idea), but, to be honest, I probably would have been asked to leave at some point anyway. That’s because, instead of me joining the Brownies to make friends and have fun, I saw it as an opportunity to do badges. Games and songs were cast aside while I went hell for leather (not in my waistcoat!) into gaining the highest number of badges ever achieved by a Brownie. Any Brownie.


Anywhere. My sleeves were so heavy with badges –


the Creative Writing badge, the First Aid badge, the Sewing Badge – that I could hardly lift my arms. The high-point of my overachieving


came on the evening when I single- handedly achieved two badges at the same time! I left the hall that night with my Cookery


Badge and Music Badge in my little mitt, well satisfied that I had managed to fry a sausage, egg and piece of soda AND play The Way We Were on the tenor recorder to Brown Owl and Tawny, who stood misty eyed at my rendition. Either that, or their eyes were just


stinging from the grease and the smoke that were emanating from the pan! Anyway, my lack of interaction with the


other Pixies and Elves didn’t go unnoticed, and the following week Brown Owl took me aside to give me a quick speech on how the Brownies weren’t just there for winning badges, but were a way of making friends. I was insulted. If I wasn’t to be allowed to continue doing badges, then I’d have to consider leaving. Thankfully fate intervened in the form of the Leprechaun with the good dress sense, and so the decision was taken out of my hands. I think it’s fair to say that, when it


comes to dishing out advice to my daughter about ‘mixing’, I’d be better leaving it to Moulinex!


Modernmum 51


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