My self esteem is currently on life support.

Maybe it’s because my “fat” pants feel tight.  Maybe because today I chose to wear my t-shirt that reads, “Vote Sober.  Look what happened last time.”  It’s hard to feel your full feminity when people point at your chest and laugh.

But I think the real reason I’m feeling so low is because I live with teenagers.

For now, my daughter doesn’t mind being seen with either me or her father.  I know it could change.  I’m prepared because my son has kept me in training since he was 10.

I don’t try to embarrass him.  I do not wear socks with my sandals.  I don’t sing along with the radio in front of his friends.  When I drop him off at school I don’t yell out the window, “Remember, dear.  Your mother loves you.”

Still, if we go anywhere in public together, he suddenly decides he has a potty emergency and heads for the closest public facility where he parks himself until I am ready to leave. 

I know it’s not all teenagers that do this.  At the kids’ high school, when it’s the last game of the season the seniors are honored at halftime.  Basketball and football players, cheerleaders and dance team members are announced and then they walk out on parade with their parents. 

I just know when he’s a senior, his father and I will wander about while our son tries to cover himself in a toilet paper origami. 

I have done my dead-level best not to use the traditional parental threats and you know the ones I mean.  My parents had me so terrified; I had nightmares about forests of sticks with eyeballs on them.  I just knew there was some kind of hell that contained all of the hands that blew off when kids stuck them out of car windows. 

My parents took us to church every time the doors were open.  I hated the Wednesday night Bible study service because it was the same day I had Girl Scouts and that made for a very long day.  But they told us that Jesus would come back when we least expected Him to and I was sure he would come back on a Wednesday night and if I wasn’t in church, fire and brimstone awaited thee. 

Thee had no idea what brimstone was but thee sure didn’t want to find out.

I told them some of the usual Mom-isms: You go out in that ratty t-shirt and the Parent Police will write me up!  Cover your mouth when you yawn; no one wants to see your molars!  You make that smirk one more time and your face will freeze that way like Dick Cheney!

If our son had his way, we would be required to wear camouflage clothing that made us blend in to the nearest surface.  His father and I being invisible and mute is his fondest dream.

So I guess I kind of stood out when I agreed not only do the Polar Plunge, but to do so in costume.

If you’ve ever “done” a Polar Plunge, you know dressing up or down or hardly at all is the secondary point to the whole thing.  I, personally, was quite surprised to see many of my fellow plungers wearing a great deal of skin and not much else.  I thought I was being quite conservative when I dressed as “Elphaba” from the Broadway show Wicked because I thought it would be funny to jump in the Deschutes River and do the whole “I’m melting” thing.

Well, I emerged from my dressing room only to see my son visibly blanch.  I said, “What?”  He said, “You’re green.”  I said, “What color do the other moms paint themselves?”

I would really like to know.

My son was sure he would die, just simply up and die, from pure embarrassment.  Much to his chagrin, there were no available holes nearby for him to jump into, the bathrooms were all the portable kind and we kicked him out of the car and took the keys.  So while I was plunging for Special Olympics, he was wandering the river banks looking for supplies for a mummy costume, or barring that, an unmanned boat that would take him far, far away.

You can see the video here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCqvCeqdS-Q I’m the only green woman.  I’m wearing the “Vote Sober…” t-shirt and holding onto the witch’s hat I borrowed from my daughter (a gift from an aunt) who was also my face painter.

If you’d like to help, send your toilet paper (unused, please) to my son.  I plan on going out in public later this week.