Can't Take Us Anywhere
By Melanie Dale
@melanierdale
We’re taking three feral teenagers to a fancy southern party where they’re expected to make small talk with a couple hundred of their closest family members they’ve never met in a hundred degree heat. What could possibly go wrong?
“Okay let’s practice your talking points, guys,” I say at dinner, where our placemats are stained and my youngest hooligan has set the table by placing a shred of paper towel and a crooked fork at each place. “When adults start a conversation with you, they generally want to small talk for a minute then move on. You want to be coherent enough to be socially acceptable but boring enough not to draw focus so they’ll move on to the next victim.”
My daughter screwed this up a few months ago at a funeral. She busted out with a Not Normal statement and ended up the focus of scrutiny. Nope, obligatory family gatherings are no time for your quirky boho lifestyle. Boring is key. Be slightly less memorable than a sweater set from Talbots.
Little kids have it easy. They’re cute. They can pull up their dresses, bend over, and expose themselves to three generations and nobody blinks. But teens are expected to perform like dancing monkeys. I was the oldest grandkid in my family so I know. You must answer questions, and answer them on demand. And above all, you must fall within the parameters of their version of Normal with a capital N. Do not pull out the weird slang you and your friends use that comes with an elaborate explanation of an inside joke. Do not whip out your TikTok, the app or any other ticking, tocking thing. No whipping out of anything, be it language or body parts.
We practice.
I drop my voice and throw on an accent. “Well helloooo. Lookit choo! How old are you? What grade are you in? What’s your favorite subject in school? What sports do you play? What do you like to do in your free time? What books have you read lately??!”
(My kids are such good sports and decide to roll with the role play. I love them immensely and would fling myself into oncoming traffic if it would save them from social awkwardness.)
We practice the basics and when they give me one-word answers, we go back and make them full sentences. “Seventh” becomes “I’m in the seventh grade.” “Math” becomes “My favorite subject is math.”
We keep working. “Don’t mumble. And when you shake a hand, make it firm and make eye contact.”
“Too much eye contact. Now you’re creepy.”
“Stop it. Seriously, know when to blink.”
This is going to be a disaster.
I have a rising senior. There’s no hope for her. I smile pityingly. “Whatever you do, don’t be honest.”
I assume the accent again. “A senior! Eighteen! Where are you going to college? What are you majoring in? What do you want to do after school? What are your goals for the rest of your life?”
She answers, “I’m not going to college. I’m gonna be a stripper.”
Nailed it. Wow. Full sentences and everything.
Talking points, kids. Just come up with three or four talking points that you can share. Try not to be jealous of the throng of small children crawling under tables and eating hors d’oeuvres off the floor. Your time has passed. Teenagers are expected to remain upright. I know it sucks. I would also like to crawl under the table.
When you need a break, escape to the bathroom. Hiding in the bathroom is a time-honored tradition. At my grandfather’s funeral when I was in high school, I was overcome by a fit of giggles and hid in the bathroom for a good long stretch. It’s not my fault my relatives were so ridiculous.
If you get a piece of gristle in your steak, don’t just spit it out. Daintily wipe your mouth with your napkin, spit the offending bite in, finish wiping, and tuck the napkin away. (Do not shove it in a pocket and forget about it till it goes through the wash and your whole load smells like Tide Pod Beef Wad.)
Don’t talk with your mouth full. We’ve been working on this for like a decade and a half.
Maybe it’ll be okay. Maybe no one will notice that I forgot to teach them how to set a table and I did teach them about the napkin in the lap but one wiggles too much and the napkin is on the floor—oops, now she’s also on the floor, under the table, trying to get the napkin, “psst, just get back in your seat everything is fine”—and one is using the napkin to hide that piece of gristle. You know what? Napkins are hard.
Who am I kidding? Our family doesn’t stand a chance because even if all three of my teens behave perfectly, they still have me as a mother, and the likelihood of me TMI-ing people so hard when they ask about my Cancer Journey™ is pretty much a done deal.
Maybe that’s my play here. Embarrass my kids before they have a chance to embarrass me.
“You look great. How was treatment?” they ask.
And then I’ll talk about the chemo bowling ball turds, all my pubes falling out, and how my nipple looked like beef jerky by the end of radiation. KaBAM kaBAM, you’ve been TMI-ed by the Oversharing Cancer Queen. *jazz hands*
Just like I’m practicing for polite society with my kids, my therapist is practicing with me to answer questions with “hanging in there,” instead of a detailed list of my current side effects followed by a vulnerability hangover. Whipping out my collapsible fan that looks like a personal massager and shoving it down my shirt during hot flashes isn’t helping.
Maybe I should practice my own talking points. “Hi, I’m Alex’s wife, Melanie. I’m a writer, (don’t say cancer don’t say cancer don’t say cancer) I have Ebola, and I’m going into the ninth grade. Oh, and my favorite subject is lunch.
Melanie Dale is the author of four books, Women Are Scary, It’s Not Fair, Infreakinfertility, and her latest, Calm the H*ck Down: Let Go and Lighten Up About Parenting. She hosts a podcast, Lighten Up with Melanie Dale, enjoys speaking at events around the country, and her essays are featured in the Coffee+Crumbs’s book, The Magic of Motherhood. She and her husband of 20 years spend their days in the Atlanta area trying to survive the teen years. It involves a lot of coffee and sarcasm.