Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

My daughter wanted to wear green today. Her wardrobe consists mainly of pink and red but I recently bought her a green shirt and a pair of pants. However, because she spends ever other weekend with her father I wasn’t sure the green outfit was here.

I dug through her dresser and thankfully located both shirt and pants. I was happily surprised to see that the green on both items matched. I really thought I had done well and also dodged a bullet.

“That’s not green” she said when I presented the clothes to her.

“Sure it is” I insisted.

“No, that’s greenish blue”

I took a closer look and sure enough the shirt and pants were teal. Still close enough in my book.

The daughter was not having any of it and was getting ready to cry.  At seven she is far too concerned with what other people think, specifically one little girl who will grow up to be a Mean Girl in high school, a leader of a clique.

I am surprised I haven’t bought more green clothing for her. She is a redhead and redheads wear green. Except my daughter’s favorite color is red so that is what we have. When she was younger I could get her anything I wanted, now that isn’t the case.

My daughter is a redhead but my son is a toehead. Actually right now his hair is jet black but that’s from a bottle. He is the only non redhead in the family. All of my nieces have red hair. When my son was little I dressed him in green, red and yellow. The same colors my nieces were wearing. At one point my sister in law remarked that I was dressing him as if he were a redhead.

Interestingly my son didn’t see himself dressed in shades of green. In every picture he drew of himself he is wearing a red shirt and blue pants, with yellow hair.

When my daughter came along I wasn’t as interested in dressing her like a redhead. Dressing her like a girl was much more entertaining. Her clothing was frilly, it had bows and beads, it was pink. It has remained that way ever since. The only other green item of clothing is a holiday dress in velvet. Not practical since it is not Christmas and it is two sizes too small.

We were running out of time and I had to get her moving. I told her I didn’t care what she wore but she needed to get something on quickly. She suggested we stop at Target and get a shirt with a few shamrocks on it. Luckily Target wasn’t open yet.

Daughter has recently decided that she needs glasses. She isn’t willing to get a second opinion however and is happy to wear my glasses. She has been begging me to let her wear them to school for the last couple of weeks.

I made a compromise.

“You can wear a pair of my glasses to school if you get dressed right now. I think I might even have a pair of green ones you can wear”

I have gobs of glasses. My father was an ophthalmologist and I used to work in his office.  Save for one pair of prescription sunglasses, I have never lost a pair. I started digging through the junk drawer (which I have still not organized) looking for a pair of green glasses I was wearing around the time of my brother’s first marriage 20 some years ago. I couldn’t find the green ones but I did manage to find the red ones. Remember glasses in the 80’s? The lenses are so big they cover your cheeks. That’s what I had.

I tried to pass them off as unique. No one is wearing big glasses. You wear these and everyone will want a pair. I also tried to sell her on transition lenses. I told her to put them in the sun and they would turn into sunglasses. They didn’t work. I don’t know if they wore off or what but they remained regular old glasses.

She bought it.

Either my kid will be  the trailblazer in her St. Patrick’s Day teal and huge red non transitioning glasses or she is going to come home in tears.

Thankfully, it’s Wednesday and her dad picks her up.

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