Ever since I had my daughter, I’ve been worried about puberty. I knew it wasn’t going to be fun, and I didn’t like the thought of her turning into a pseudo-adult. Among some of my attempts to thwart the onset of puberty are serving only organic milk and giving her three 3-year-old birthday parties. This has not worked. The worst has now happened.
She is growing hair. Shh! Don’t tell her I’m telling her business. But the other day she says she needs to tell me something in private. I was hoping for news of her dad getting his car repo’ed or maybe even that there was a cute boy at summer camp. Instead I got, “What am I supposed to do about this?” And then she shows me her armpit. At that point I was still even hoping for some fungal growth or maybe even a carefully placed tattoo. There are balms that take care of stuff like that, you know. Unfortunately I did not need a microscope to see what she was talking about. A few months ago she had a few stragglers, but now it was full-out bush war.
After I regained my speech processes, I said that it was time to start shaving. She said, “What about the hair on my legs?” I said we would leave that for another time, sister. Don’t even go there until it’s absolutely necessary, like when you are in the Olympics and you need to decrease your time for the swimming speed trials. Anyway, this whole shaving thing brought on my fear of sharp objects. I determined the safest route would be an electric shaver. What could go wrong with an electric shaver?
A lot, it turns out. I scheduled myself a pedicure one evening. I rushed home after work hoping for a quick shave before I exp0sed my albino legs to the world. I thought I’d just use her little shaver so I wouldn’t even have to jump in the shower. I was so proud of my time-saving ability until terrible pain started emanating from my left shin. Blood was dripping all over the floor. It turns out the little foil cover on the shaver had broken away and I was running naked vibrating blades up my leg. Not very pleasant. So then I had to bandage my prickly white self and head to the nail salon and explain that I didn’t have a contagious skin condition. I don’t think they believed me, but they went ahead and rubbed salt in my wounds anyway.
This was, of course, just in time for my Mexican beach vacation. In a cruel twist of luck, it was also the first time I managed to get a tan. You gotta admire the band-aid-shaped white blotches that now appear on my leg. So what lesson did I learn here? Once your daughter enters puberty, move to a naturalist colony (or a third-world country) where no one shaves their legs. Otherwise you may bleed to death. You can never be too safe.
The Fretful Mother's Blog 
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