Prince Alarming (The Un-Quest for Love Part I)

My daughter, who is 4, has recently developed a condition.

Once that is keeping me up at night with worry.

Her cheeks are flushed, she twitters when she speaks and her toes twinkle.

The doctors are baffled.

But, I'm not.

She is suffering from the very common, but dangerous, Cinderella-itis.

Cinderella-itis is a serious condition that is spread through exposure to tv rays and dvd output, passed from the mouths of babes and then breeds rapidly in the pocketbooks of exhausted mothers who will do just about anything to not hear that whining.

I even made her wash her hands after handling that Cinderella doll.

But. Sob. It was too late.

The Disney shaped virus was already coarsing through her veins and clogging them with glitter and hope.



The other day, at the park, she coughed up some of that glitter...

"Mommy? Where is your Prince Charming?", she asks sweetly as I belched after our picnic lunch.

Suddenly. I felt feverish.

"Dead". I said.

Thinking that would be the end of that.

But, just like when she squishes an ant between her pudgy pink fingers and then, just as easily, looks for another to replace it...

She hops up and runs over to the first man she sees.

A bald, pot-bellied prince straddling a moped and licking fried chicken from his fingers.

"'Scuse me, mister. My Mommy is looking for a Prince".

He grins, looks me over, wipes his mouth with his t-shirt and says...

"Ask your Mommy if she'll settle for a one-knight stand".

We walk home that evening. Hand in hand.

My daughter and I...that is.

I tell her that Cinderella was a lovely, but very misguided, make-believe character.

Finding Prince Charming should not be our only goal in life.

The fact that Mommy doesn't have one is a personal choice. I can rescue myself just fine, should I ever find myself trapped in a tower.

And so can she.

We are strong, independent women who enjoy staying home on a Friday night, we shave our legs for NO ONE....

Life is more than ball gowns!!

She ponders all this for a moment. And then says.

"But, then. Why don't they make movies about mommy's who wear dirty bathrobes?".

Good point.