Jingle Bell Rocking Around the Tannenbaum

So more holiday cheer around the work place and, yes, they did bring sugar. Damn them. This time in the form of oatmeal cookies. Just because it contains a whole grain doesn’t mean it’s not sugar—big, white piles of refined sugar. Plus, the wild child of the day was allergic to peanuts and couldn’t have one—MAY CONTAIN PEANUTS—so there was that fit to deal with.

Anyway. We had a concert from a group of adolescent girls who dress in purple T-shirts (with something about a hand, or reaching out, or holding one on them) singing carols to a tape recorder. They weren’t bad, honestly, though I think they expected a bit more audience participation than possible for a young child with a cookie in his or her mouth (and in their hair, on the carpet, crumbed and caked on the bottom of their shoes). They had jingle bells on their wrists that they shook in unison and some basic choreography that you could tell was very embarrassing for them.

Owh. And I just had to cringe in memory. Yup, they were about middle school age. 13 or 14. Gaining that weight of adolescence. The beginning of skin problems. The first people you know going, or saying they have gone, all the way. Lockers and note passing and pain. They shook their little bells and their budding hips very awkwardly, tentatively and I wanted to tell them, “I feel your pain, girls! And, no, it isn’t going to get any better for quite a while but it will. Well, no. Some girls never grow out of it, I guess. And it is never, ever really carefree again. I’ve been there. But good luck, sisters. I’m pulling for you.”

I hope that Santa will be kind to these sweet sopranos and bring them lots of stridex, anytime cell phone minutes, designer jeans, and gift certificates. Why gift cards? Because it gives them more time to roam about the mall. Silly.