Photography

We went out for a drink with our daughter (14), together with her BFF (they don’t have ‘friends’ any more, that’s archaic remains, now they have BFFs, right?), and I managed to take some really good photos. It’s widely known how perfect photo subjects teenagers can be, which issue is deepened by specific circumstances, such as whenever you have more than 1 individual from this very unique age group, and so after this intro you might have found out already that my offspring in this picture is located on the left. I succeeded, however, to take beautiful memories of some total strangers, e.g. look at that nice lady in her perfectly sharp green cardigan..

Only that??

This morning when softly waking my daughter up:

Me: ‘Noëmi, wake up Sweetie, you know it’s today when we go to Lier to the hospital for the dental surgery when they pull out your 4 wisdom teeth under anesthesia.. How are you?’

Noëmi (13): ‘Today? So I can skip the test in French, HURRAAAAY!!!!’

Everything is relative.

There is always another solution

School yard, long break.

One of the teachers (dragging a sobbing 5-year old along to my daughter):

‘Noëmi, Tim says you have just called him an Exceptionally Wicked Child.’

My daughter (13): ‘Correct.’

Teacher: ‘May I ask you not to call him this name any more? You can see it hurts him a lot, he is crying.’

My daughter: ‘Tim hit my little brother a few minutes ago so hard from behind that Walter is still in pain.

If somebody is an Exceptionally Wicked Child, I think it is fair to call hem an ‘Exceptionally Wicked Child’.’

Teacher: ‘I understand now – still, could you please find another solution?’

My daughter: ‘Well, OK. Since this level of wickedness is really exceptional and does not occur very frequently in our school, in the future I will call him ‘Limited Edition’.’

Heroic

Our daughter (13) coming home, changing clothes in the hall, meaning dragging her shorts off through her boots.

She (quickly looking at my face while I am watching the heroic struggle):

‘Mom, I know you have difficult moments right now, and I want you to know how proud I am of you that you do not say a word…and that you keep it this way..’