Where Awesome Is Relative

Some recent self esteem boosters:

• I got a call from a friend whose daughter was working on a school project about fame.  Her voice was excited, “Vern!  I found your celebrity twin!  Have you ever seen Ugly Betty?”

•  My kids are better than I am, and I’m not just saying that disparagingly.  They are smarter, they work harder, and they’re more goal-oriented.  Hard as I try to preach mediocrity as a purer law, they’re not buying it.  I’m happy for them, actually, until something happens and I point out how they are making me look bad and Samantha says, “Well Mom, maybe you’d better step up your game,” then I just feel like an idiot.

• A couple of weeks ago I stood in the entryway of a woman’s home who had just lost her husband.  We were waiting for her to finish a phone call in the other room as I gripped flowers and a casserole with one hand and thrust the other in my pocket.  What the…?  My fingers came in contact with something squishy and as I pulled my hand out it was covered in chocolate, the product of a hoarded Reese’s chocolate Easter egg long since forgotten.  What’s a girl to do?  Oh well, nothing says “I’m sorry for your loss” like licking chocolate off my fingers as a grieving woman rounds the corner. 

• For Mother's Day I got a little box full of written messages from Drew that he had made in his Sunday School class.  One slip of paper encouraged him to finish the sentence, "My favorite memory about my mom's childhood is_________" to which he wrote, "when she went hip hop dancing in a bar." 

• Samantha is very proud of the fact that she takes after her Dad in most things.  From her eye color to her even temperament she is cut from her father’s mold.  The other night as we were getting ready to take a run around the lake we started discussing shoes.  “So Mom,” Samantha asked, “do you have neutral or support shoes?”  I answered, “neutral” and then she moved on to Cory who reported, “support”.  “Well,” she said, “just one more thing I take after Dad on.”  I casually asked, “Samantha, did you get anything from me?”   She replied, “Yeah, you know how you get really excited about doing something and then you never really finish it?  I think I get that from you.”  *cough*cough* And then who do you suppose came in last on our 5 mile run?  Hey, AT LEAST I FINISHED.

 I guess it could be worse, I could be a yodeling ventriloquist in the Miss America pageant: