Fantasy-Destroying Mom

Every once in a while, there are very lovely people that come to visit at work to make my day just peachy. I don't claim to know all the answers at twenty-two; in fact, I could claim soundly that I know less than an eighth of all the answers.

On a given day last summer, I was pretty proud of myself for transforming a bleak hallway on the way to the bathrooms into a colorful, child-friendly haven of marine bio-based educational posters and animal exhibits. I liked  to include my own geeky passions to make it more fun for the kids: including posters showing the difference between the fins of different fish, featuring Nemo, Ariel, Bruce, and the importance of spiders, of course featuring your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

My happy feeling was obliterated on a sunny day when I still wore a smile to work and didn't understand that some of my coworkers were forever stuck in asinine high school drama and would frequently force their idiocy upon others. But that's a whole other story in and of itself. On this day, I was delightedly pointing out the difference between Nemo's rounded caudal fin and Ariel's forked fin when a voice interrupted me.

The voice came from a young mother who looked like she spent more time at the gym than spending time with her daughter. She was constantly looking around to see who was noticing her, but for once, she was still, and speaking loud enough to her daughter to make me pause mid-sentence.

"I think she's a little confused," the mother said in an overly sing-song voice that sounds like something reserved for an actress at Disney world. "The fin would actually move up and down, not side to side. And actually, a real animal should've been used. Mermaids aren't real."

Telling a little kid that awesome things like mermaids aren't real is less of a crime than the Santa ordeal, but it's still ripping a part of childhood away from them. Plus, the posters were to get kids to pay attention via Disney characters. I honestly don't think the little girl is going to say ten years from now, "Gee, I totally remember that hand-made poster and that forked caudal fins do not represent fictional animated characters that have more cetacean-like movement."

So no, Mother-who-has-nothing-better-to-do-than-try-and-make-people-feel-bad-about-themselves (whew), I'm not confused. I got your daughter's attention, and she enjoyed learning. Even if it was slightly wrong. Who has the time to nit-pick over such specific things? Jeezum.

Besides, what's so wrong about mermaids? They're a staple of childhood (see video below), literature, and mythology! So here's to all you who still let your kids believe in mermaids, unicorns, faeries, and dragons until they're old enough to figure it out for themselves.