I have an friend who is the mother of four less-than-beautiful children. By less-than-beautiful, I mean slightly terrifying. My friend and her husband.... well, lets just say the only runway they've ever been on is at the airport. My friend, (we'll call her..... Quasimodo? That's a little harsh. How about Helen?) Helen, is always emailing pictures of her "gorgeous" children. Even though I know what the emails are going to contain, I still have to repress the impulse to recoil violently.
"So what?" you say. "Big deal! Everyone thinks their own kids are athletic supermodel-geniuses." While this is decidedly true, Helen's fantasy runs a little deeper than most. Helen wants to enter her two youngest daughters (3 and 5) in a beauty pageant.
After the initial shock and subsequent fit of laughter, I became immediately grateful that I received the news in an email and not over the phone. I'm not that good a liar. I replied to the email, stating my feelings about pageants at large (for the record, I abhor them,) and tactfully avoiding discussion of her daughters' err... shortcomings. She replies that she figured that's how I would feel about pageants, but that she wanted to know whether or not HER kids should enter. Since my last email (apparently) wasn't specific enough, I had to employ every ounce of diplomacy I possessed. Ever see the movie "Little Miss Sunshine"? Good. Now imagine that it was a horror film and you'd get the picture. These girls winning a beauty pageant would be like Paris Hilton being awarded the MacArthur Fellowship.
Helen then sent me a recent picture of her 5 year old and another of the dress she was considering buying for her. As the phrase "A face only a mother could love" entered my mind, I was touched by the love-goggles that my friend had for her kids. In her eyes, they are perfect, and I guess that's all that really matters.Its sweet in a blindly delusional sort of way.
