Pick your battles

I am under no illusions about my parenting skills. Or more accurately, my lack of parenting skills. I won't be winning any Mother of the Year awards and Jboy just might make a fortune writing that Mommy Dearest memoir like he always threatens. That said, holy shit am I ever a good parent compared to some asshats I know.

Now I don't want to name names, so let's just call her Stacey. And her daughter Sweet Girl. And I love Sweet Girl like no body's business but I'm not blind. I know she exaggerates and leaves out specific pieces of information and/or chooses words carefully so that she isn't really lying. Just like any teenager. But good God, Stacey lost her mother fucking mind last night.

At first I thought maybe I was way out of line thinking Sweet Girl, a 17 year old who drives, works, gets straight A's and pretty much lives alone, (cause Stacey has a loser boyfriend that she'd rather spend time with) was mature enough to color her hair without her crazy, controlling mom's permission.

Am I wrong? Should I have called Crazy Stacey (ooh, I like that better) and made sure she was okay with her kid getting her hair colored at a salon? Sweet Girl's hair had already been colored at home with less than perfect results, which is why I suggested the woman who does my hair. And it's not like she was bleaching it out and dying it pink or anything. Or getting blue ends like me.

Crazy Stacey started sending text messages after the foils were already on Sweet Girl's head. "You better not be coloring your hair" and "I'm not kidding" and then I got one too. We decided it was too late to take it out, the dye had been on long enough to change her hair color...just not to the color she wanted. So, sure enough, Crazy Stacey shows up at the salon. At first we thought she'd just drive by like a psycho but when she parked I went outside to talk to her.

She looked like she was going to kill someone. I'm not kidding, I thought she was carrying a gun. Total crazy eyes. We talked outside for a couple of minutes. Well I talked, she yelled.

"I'm sorry, I thought you knew. It never occurred to me that you'd have a problem with this." "YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN! SHE KNEW! SHE KNEW!" and my personal favorite "I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS PLACE WOULD DYE THE HAIR OF A MINOR!" as if they had just tied her off and shot her full of heroin. I tried to calm her down. "I understand that you're upset that she didn't tell you..." "SHE LIED!" "She didn't tell either one of us everything..." "NO! SHE LIED!" "Okay, but hasn't she colored her hair..." "YES! AND THAT'S WHY IT'S SO DAMAGED NOW! SHE KNEW! SHE KNEW!"

Fucking insane, right?

So then she goes into the salon. The really nice, quiet receptionist asks if she can help her and Crazy Stacey, no longer yelling but certainly not using her indoor voice, says "Yeah, I guess I'm here for this...mumbles mean nasties..." and points at Sweet Girl like she's Satan or something. I missed this next part...because I was trying to send psychic messages to Sweet Girl that it would be okay...but apparently Crazy Stacey yelled "You did not have permission to dye her hair!" at the owner of the salon. Like for real?

I think everyone in the building wanted to laugh because she was obviously batshit, but nobody did because she was obviously batshit. She finally left, saying that Sweet Girl "Better come right home after."

And after all of that insanity, she didn't say anything about it to Sweet Girl when she got home.

Was I wrong? Was it a big deal? Maybe because I have boys I'm a little biased. I went home and told Jboy he has my permission to do whatever he wants with his hair. Since you know, it's his hair. And man would I love it if he did something, anything with his hair.


And oh holy crap am I ever glad that Sweet Girl and I didn't go up to Leviticus to get our traguses pierced like we had planned.
And before you start screaming Crazy Stacey, you only have to be sixteen for that.