In recently devastating news out of Cincinnati, Ohio, your 10-year-old niece is now old enough to clearly see that you’re not the cool aunt in the family.
“Aunt Helen, why are there always weird stains on your sweatpants?” your niece, Tessa, said with the piercing cold truth of a preteen. “Do you ever do your laundry?”
“Tessa, that’s not very nice,” your sister said. “You love your Aunt Helen. Doesn’t she have such cool nail polish?”
“No,” Tessa returned. “Aunt Helen bites her nails.”
While you did reaffirm that you live in a hip, metropolitan area, Tessa then acknowledged that you do still live with roommates. She has you there.
“I used to think you were cool,” Tessa went on, as you held back tears induced by a 10-year-old’s brutal honesty. “But I guess I just thought that because you’re not as old as mom. Do you still even have a job?”
When asked who she thinks the cool member of the family is, Tessa replied with “Grandma, because she has cool vintage clothes.”
While Tessa once found you to be “very cool,” her developing sense of the world has helped her to realize that there are many cooler people than you in the world.
“I really miss when you were little,” you said, holding back tears. “You were so cute then.”
