The Time I Embarrassed My Daughter

When my daughter Sofie was in kindergarten, I embarrassed her horribly. To this day, she still talks about it.

It was a very cold and blustery Wednesday in Oklahoma. As I got her dressed for school, I pulled out an adorable hat to keep her head warm. It was in the shape of a bear - it had the ears sticking up and the snout pointing straight up in the air. It was fuzzy and big and brown. I loved that hat! It was a hand-me-down from my niece from her first experience on the ski slopes in Colorado. I thought it was the cutest thing I had ever seen. When I looked at my daughter wearing it, I thought it was so sweet.

Well, apparently my daughter's classmates didn't agree. On the playground they kept teasing her, yelling, "Sofie's a bear. She's trying to get us! Run! Run!" They spent those precious minutes on the playground running and screaming - all the time trying to get away from the mean, scary "Sofie Bear". They ran up ladders, slid down slides, rolled down the hill - all in their crazed efforts to escape. And this continued the entire recess. My sweet daughter kept running behind them, saying, "It's just a hat. I'm not a bear."

She was absolutely livid when I picked her from school that day. When I asked her how her day was, I got an earful!

It breaks my heart when I hear her recall the bear hat incident. I know that she will never forget that day or forgive her mom for making her wear the bear hat.