BETTER SHE DOESN'T KNOW

While my mother didn't have a problem with me going on dates and riding in cars with a 15 year old driver before I was 16, she had a problem with me wearing make up and doing some other girlie things before I was 16.  I probably started wearing lipstick, occasionally, in the ninth grade.  But that was it.  At some point, I got a hold of some mascara (Linda, could it have been from you?) and started using that as well.  I never said anything to my mother about it.

One day, while riding with her in the car, I started applying mascara.  My mother wasn't too happy about it. I don't remember exactly what she said.  But it was probably something like "You're too young to be wearing that.".  However, she failed to tell me when I would be old enough to start wearing mascara.  It isn't that my mother didn't wear makeup.  She always did - rouge, face powder, lipstick, mascara - the works.  In fact, she never left the house without "her face on".  It could be that she didn't like the idea that her youngest daughter was growing up.

Then there was the time that my sister, Linda, took me aside and told me that it was probably time for me to start shaving my legs.  In a somewhat clandestine meeting in the basement bathroom, she introduced me to the science of leg shaving.  Using her Gillette razor, I soaped up my legs and went to work.  We probably shared a razor for quite a while because of Linda's advice to me..."Don't tell mother that you are shaving your legs.".
It was another one of those things that I knew my mother did, but for some reason it wasn't OK for me.