Carol’s Column

Help! I've got a teenage daughter

THERE is one thing worse than being incarcerated in a motor car with a son who has a learner's licence, and that is being incarcerated in a shopping centre with a teenage daughter.

"Ma, I've got nothing to wear," wailed my 14-going-on-23-year-old daughter.

So who needs clothes? Did Adam and Eve have clothes? Of course not. And look what they started. Look how successful they were.

I put on my spectacles and gazed at her. For somebody naked, she was very well covered. She wore striped long-johns and a grandpa vest covered by a voluminous purple garment that almost covered her kneecaps. This in turn was tied with a multi-coloured Indian scarf. On her head she had a piece of material strategically tied in order to cover her ears yet fluff up her hair. And both her feet were enclosed in rainbow socks and leather sandals. Around her ankle was a Zulu anklet and around her neck, worry beads on a leather thong.

No, my daughter was not naked.

"I need shoes and a bra," she confided to me.

"Okay, we'll leave at eight on Saturday morning and arrive at Sandton City before the crowds come." Which is why, on Saturday, I found myself trailing my leggy offspring through shop after shop after shop.

It seems there is not a shoe in Africa for my youngest unmarried daughter. She wanted white sandals. Every shoe shop has white sandals, but they are not sandals in which Nicky Lazar's feet would be seen dead.

For instance: "Nicky, look at these, aren't they lovely?" I'd chosen a pair of dainty, strappy shoes that would flatter any foot. My daughter drew herself up to her full height, and looked down upon me. "Ma, I don't believe what I'm seeing," she said. "Those are grotesque." Silently, I replaced them and watched as she asked the salesperson to bring a pair of white ethnic clodhoppers.

Up and down she strode, looking like Attila the Hun on a rampage. "They're quite nice. What do you think, Ma?" I shuddered.

It will suffice to say that the bigger the shoe, the clumpier, the thicker, the longer, the heavier — the better Nicky liked it. Thank heavens each one she chose was out of stock. I said a silent prayer to Saint Hymie, pushed my chin out resolutely and prepared for the Battle of the Bra.

A bra is a bra. Wrong. My daughter had to have a sports bra.

"A sports bra? What's wrong with an ordinary bra that looks sporty?" I asked. An intelligent question, I thought. "Nicky, I never wore a sports bra even when I did the most strenuous sport," I told her.

"Yes, and look at you now," she said.

I tucked my breasts into my waistband and bit my tongue.

At last, after pounding the shop aisles, we came upon a sports bra. I was overjoyed. "Look, I've found one!" I yelled, brandishing the bra around my head rather like a discus thrower.

"Oh, Ma," said my daughter and disappeared.

I found her an hour later. "Where did you go?" I asked querulously.

"Ma, how can you embarrass me like that?" said Nicky. "What would have happened if somebody I knew saw you?"

"So, they'd see that you mean business in the sporting world," I replied with some asperity. My kneecaps were getting tired, you understand.

Shopping centres are a plot against mothers of teenage daughters.

Suddenly, from bras and sandals, we'd graduated to "I need a top desperately," followed by "I must get a dress," followed by "Skirts are easy to wear," and then "I haven't got a top for the skirt I've just bought."

Is this my daughter I wondered for the umpteenth time as Nicky paraded in front of me? Can it be possible that the fruit of my womb could have such diametrically opposed taste to mine?

Whatever I liked, my daughter loathed. The words disgusting, revolting and hideous flew off her lips like pearls cast before warthogs. As did stunning and amazing for the things I hated but she loved.

Tall, slender and shapely, Nicky emerged from countless cubicles looking like the Michelin Man. The larger and more shapeless a garment, the more she liked it. "You've lost something," I cried at last.

"What, what have I lost?" she asked, looking around anxiously.

"Your bottom," I replied. My daughter was not amused.

The queues were endless, the cubicles full of other mothers' teenage daughters. Loud music was plentiful but seating was in short supply.

"Can I help you, Madam?" said someone in pink with co-ordinated green hair.

"No, I'm just waiting for my daughter," I replied and went and lay on the floor next to five other exhausted mothers. "This is nothing," said the one next to me, "wait until you have to buy a matric dance dress." The others nodded and I trembled within.

"Are you hungry?" I asked Nicky round about lunchtime. I needn't have bothered. There were only four shopping hours to go before shutdown, food could wait.

At 3pm, I bought a denim mini and a sequined boob tube and it was only when a short blonde kissed me and said thank you, that I realised I'd taken the wrong daughter from the last shop. At 4pm, I retrieved Nicky in an Eastern emporium trying on a flimsy dishcloth.

At five, we returned home triumphant albeit bra-less and shoeless but with three outsize tops, a nappy type skirt, baggy shorts, baggier pants and the briefest mini on the Continent. Plus an assortment of slides and bows to place probably anywhere except in my daughter's hair.

Like Churchill, after World War 2, I felt triumphant. Against all odds, we had overcome and Nicky was clotheless no more.

As we opened the front door, the phone rang.

"Hi, Mandy," I heard Nicky say. "I'm exhausted, we've just come back from Sandton and I couldn't find anything. What shall I do, I haven't a thing to wear?"

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