On the eve of her first anniversary, my daughter had a deep philosophical question that only her mother could answer: "What's naugahyde?"
Naugahyde, as we all know, is a fine leather made from the tanned hides of the rare Naugabeast, a rodent-sized antelope that dwells in the lowlands of Naugaland, where it grazes on daisies, plays dominoes, and dances in the moonlight.
"Cheap imitation leather," I said, "made of vinyl or something."
The question arose because we had sent her and our son-in-law an anniversary card that listed variations on the traditional gifts for various anniversaries. Everyone knows the traditional first-anniversary gift is paper, the 25th is silver, and the 50th is gold, but what about all the ones in between? This card suggested for various dates gifts such as duct tape, spackle, soup, air, and naugahyde.
I suppose it's not a bad thing to have raised to adulthood a daughter who is ignorant of naugahyde--as long as she's not ignorant of other important items. Recently she's been demonstrating her ability to remove wallpaper, paint paneling, plant irises, and buy a house, skills much more important than a working knowledge of naugahyde.
Just after our daughter and son-in-law closed on their new house, I met their real-estate agent, who told me how much she had enjoyed working with them. "You've raised two terrific kids," she said, but I pointed out that I can take credit for only one of them. If she'd known of their ignorance of naugahyde, what would she have thought?
We'll just keep that in the family. Nobody ever needs to know.
2 comments:
That's funny, that the real estate agent made a weird mental leap.
I put naugahyde right up there with kr@ft spreadable "cheese" as plastic stuff no one really needs to know about.
It's kind of like pleather. :)
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