Sometimes we think about the next ten years and shudder like the family car being driven by a sixteen year old learner driver learning stick shift for the very first time. When we’ve got four girls going through puberty at the same time our house might shudder too. Literally.
And it seems the puberty related tantrums have already started.
“What is that?” I heard Miss4 ask her mother. “All that black stuff.”
I was ironing a shirt in the hallway on the other side of the bathroom door.
“Pubic hair,” said Tracey.
At this point I stopped ironing. If I had the right sort of ears they would have pricked up. I’ve lived in this house long enough to know when to pay attention.
The next line confirmed my suspicions.
“Is pubic hair the hair that grows on your wee wee and bum?”
I didn’t even have to be in the room to know the sort of face my wife was now pulling. And I suddenly realized I was pulling one of my own – a big ohhh myyyy gawd expression mixed with a big old fashioned, ‘that’s gotta hurt’ smile.
“I do not have hair on my bum!”
I’m told that at this point Miss4 went all the way around the back of her mum to make sure.
“You don’t, Mummy,” came the surprised voice of Miss4 a few seconds later. “Just on your wee wee. But anyway, I don’t like it.”
“It’s normal,” my wife assured her.
“Well, I don’t want it on me. That would be the grossest.”
“That’s okay. If you don’t like it you can have it removed. Shaved or waxed.”
“No!” Miss4 said with more urgency. “I don’t like it. I don’t want it to happen at all. How do I stop it from happening at all?”
And then she yelled and cried and threw herself around in defiance of the possibility of unwanted hairs.
“Heaven help her,” Tracey grinned when she came out of the bathroom a minute later to find me vigorously ironing my shirt and fooling no one. “She doesn’t even know there’s such a thing as monthlies yet.”
I just hope we still think this is all as funny when they’re all actually going through it. Although I suspect, like today, listening while pretending to be busy might be the way to go.
Raising a family on little more than laughs
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For God’s sake don’t tell her the truth that it doesn’t just stay in discrete patches on your body but attempts to take over as much as possible. Those damn books lied.