Little, that's a lot

"Aaaaaa! I have facial hair!" Luke yelled. He's only six. And it was a face paint "tatoo" of a dali-like mustache and a little soft paw. But, to him and the other boys, it felt real. They felt like men. Like that was all it took. To be a man. Get a mustache.
For a long second, the other teachers and I basked in their innocence.
In the next second, I heard R. moan, "yeah, just wait 10 years and you'll be waking up saying 'auuuggh! I have facial hair! Again?! Every fucking day with the facial hair...."
We laughed and laughed at our aged wisdom. And all the years of agony and ecstasy it took to get here.

The other day, I saw a billboard that said, something like, "Jaded is so yesterday. Dare to be happy." Granted, it was a car ad. But I fell for it. I thought I could get that tatooed on my body.
Daring to be happy.
Just plain daring.
dare.
Dare you. Double dare you. Triple dog dare you.
Who doesn't love a good dare? It gets your heart pumping. Your brain roaring.
i DARE you!
Hell, I've said it to myself millions of times. I want to do something, I don't want to do something.
I dare you, Molly.

RK and I finally saw "Little Miss Sunshine" and I felt like the whole thing was one delicious big dare.
I dare you to stop.
I dare you to keep going.

My sister had told me, "Molly! You HAVE to see this movie! It's our family!"
Yes, we owned a vw bus (well, three, i think, over the years), but that wasn't it. 'Cuz, we don't have two kids in our family, we have five. And, no, our grampa didn't have a heroin habit, but, there were probably many other dysfunctions going on. I, as the youngest child of these five kids, never wanted to be in a beauty pagent, but I did obsessively rollerskate in the driveway believing Alan Funt would pop out of the bushes and yell, "Smile! You're on candid camera!"
The over-all message of the film was family. And not just family, but seriously dedicated i-am-your-family-no-matter-what-fucked-up-thing-has-happened-to-you-by-you-on and on and on. No matter what.
(sing it!) WE ARE FAM-I-LY, I got all my sisters and me....
Family stands by you no matter what.
Family stands by.
Family.
I cried from the moment the movie opened to the last credit rolled.
When Olive's whole family gets up on stage and rocks out with her-- to what basically turns out to be a stripper routine her grampa taught her... gads, it was beautiful-- well, I bawled so hard I could barely see the picture. But that's what family does, it gets up and take a load off your shoulder. My family has repeatedly stood up and taken my load on. My family sticks by one another through thick and thin. They give and they take. And then they take and then they give. Every one of us, at one time or another, has checked out and then checked back in again. And the rest were all right there, waiting for that one to come back in their time.

My sister was right, this movie IS our family. With all the years of agony and ecstasy it took us to get here.