Narmal?
That is how my four-and-three-quarters-years-old daughter says it. Narmal. As in, nice and narmal. As in, taco bell family dinner is narmal. As in, staying up to watch American Idol when you are four is narmal. As in, not having anyone to sit next to at the birthday party is narmal. As in, your mom being so lazy that she takes you to Disneyland instead of throwing you a birthday party with all those kids who won’t sit next to you…is narmal.
But growing a kid up in westla can quickly make you lose your grip on narmal.
At Gymnastics last weekend, one especially Chatty Dad in the class explained, and really just out of boredom because who can watch another one of these classes (except for the psycho dad who screams at his daughter to run faster around the the obstacle course that not even the teacher cares about) that his son was going to take an extra year in preschool.
No big deal. The “Gift Year” is fairly common for boys (and really, girls) in this town who are considering going to private school. At the same time, Chatty Dad casually dropped a few classic Mom-Bombs – the kid is being tutored in another language (BAM!) is a gifted musician (BAM! BAM!) reads chapter books (BAM! BAM! BAM!) and truthfully, his children – who like to read to each other (KABLOOEY!) are so advanced they have had to call the school to complain about the slacker workload. (Reload...) Oh and did I mention Chatty Jr. is a jazz aficionado?
At the same time, I happened to look through the glass wall into the gym just in time to catch my own little four-and-three-quarters-booger-genius picking her nose and sticking her fingers into her mouth. Narmal-style. Lovely. (Let’s review the basics on the way home. “Stick your fingers in your nose you get a germ. Only babies stick their fingers in their nose…”)
Turning back to my successful and truly sort of nice-ish Chatty Dad who Has it All -- or MIA -- Most of It All -- (Do you want details? Of course you do. But they're boring. Shorthand: blah blah blah entertainment guy, and blah blah blah chipper ivy league wife no longer Has To Work but I digress – the point is, can you blame the guy? He has to get his kids into Dye or Mirman or Brentwood so they can get into Harvard-Westlake or Marlborough or Brentwood so they can get deferred and then outright rejected from Harvard and Stanford but possibly accepted into Brown or Penn or Columbia or into not quite as good of an ivy league school as Chatty and Chipper went to...so Chatty jr. can meet his own Chipper law-school bound wife...so they can have 2.0 children and be able to afford Karate...ah, the circle of westla life...you see Simba, we eat the antelope...
Can you blame the guy? He’s, after all, just a narmal guy, hoping for the chance to pay sixteen to twenty grand for kindergarten, not counting annual giving, the capital campaign, and the completely optional yet mandatory twice-yearly teacher holiday and end of the year supplication?
Narmal for this town. All boogers aside.
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