My oldest is a bit of a smartass; no shocker there I know and it's one of the things I love most about her. One of her homework assignments this week was to create a poster and travel brochure on Kenya. She worked for two hours on it and as a result got a high-five from her teacher signaling a job well done. On Wednesday Gen and two of her girlfriends were being nice enough to help another friend with his poster. The school was having a special assembly just for the African American students to discuss low testing scores, something that I was like, Are you kidding me? That seems borderline suspect but apparently it’s been done before. So the plan was he would go to the assembly while the girls continued to work on his poster. This dude made the mistake of bragging (within ear shot of the girls) that he had “three white girls doing his work for him.” (Big, HUGE mistake). When he returned to class he found his poster done; complete with big pink hearts and pretty little swirlies. Gen said she smiled at him and said “Hope you like your poster!” and walked off. I know that smile; it’s more of a devilish “I got you” smile that tends to make you very uneasy. In this case the poor guy deserved it.

Since her Clay Center friend came to stay with us Gentry has been more out-going. A comment her friend made kind of made her realize how closed minded some people are and maybe being here isn’t so bad after all. She has just now started letting her guard down and acting like her real, goofy as hell self around her Lawrence friends. The other night as we took one of the girls home after track practice she nonchalantly said, “Hey Twiggy, what language are you guys doing in IFL?” Without blinking Gen answered “French.”  I HAD to ask her about it and she said that’s what all her friends call her. Unfortunately that was the nickname I had when I was Gen’s age however I never did embrace it like she has. Now when I pick her up from school it’s like picking up Norm from Cheers only it’s, “Heeeeeeey Twiiiiiiggy!”    

Bon and I were quickly informed that we are NOT allowed to call her that name either. So instead we made up a song cause we are mature adults like that. “Twiggy, Twiggy, Twiggy, can’t you see see…. that your legs are sooo skinny….” Turns out we were the only ones amused but we were okay with that. Come to think of it, we did get that evil little look that I’m certain her friend got when he made his unfortunate comment…

Oops.