I Want to Be a Pretty Princess!

Dear Mom,

I know that, when the invitations to child beauty pageants came in the mail (as they often did), I would gasp over the idea of getting to go someplace that required a ball gown. A ball gown! Like Cinderella! And I know that I would drop little hints like bricks in your path of "gee, wouldn't it be cool to go somewhere and wear a ball gown?" And I know that when you said, "You don't want to do that," I said, "Yes, I do," and I thought that you were just being a stick-in-the-mud because you preferred jeans.

But I could have been one of these girls:
http://jezebel.com/tag/living-dolls/

And instead, I wore old prom dresses and bridesmaid dresses that you picked up at garage sales and tailored to fit me. Because, even if the powers that be had seen fit to drop a budding princess in your jeans-bedecked lap, you were going to save money to put that princess through college.

Thanks, mom. Thanks a lot.