A couple days ago, I was compelled to wear a skirt. It was my turn to be a lector at church (read prayers, announcements and passages from the Bible), and jeans, my normal standby, were not allowed.

Determined to look respectable, I also donned a pair of heels that my mom picked out and a semi-matching shirt. I brushed my teeth, washed my face and came off not looking too bad, considering my 10 minutes of prep time.

I read my lines with minimal errors, and as I stepped down from the podium, I was feeling pretty good. Until I heard my mom, that is.
“Can you try to walk like a girl?” my mom inquired in frustration. Startled, I wondered what I had done wrong. I thought I walked just the same as anybody.

Apparently not.

My mom delivered further instruction. “When you’re in a skirt, you have to take baby steps,” she said. “You can’t just take long, indelicate strides like a man! You have to be ladylike.”

This was all news to me. I thought walking was a means of getting somewhere, and in my mind, bigger steps equaled more efficient transportation. Who knew I had a Manwalk?

Caught up in my thoughts, I arrived home and ate my apple and vanilla yogurt in a somber state. My parents, however, remained in a chipper let’s-make-fun-of-our-only-daughter mood.

My bangs, coincidentally, were pulled back with tape at the moment – they were in my way and the tape was handy. I knew I must have looked ridiculous, but I didn’t much care. I had no one to impress at that moment.

Looking at me sadly, my mom determined that I looked like the “before” picture of Sandra Bullock’s character in “Ms. Congeniality.” You know, when the heroine is regarded as “one of the guys,” has yet to discover a hairbrush, trips over her own two feet and intimidates any prospective partner with her masculinity.

My mom shot my dad a pitiful look, asking where she could have gone wrong with me.

“You’d better work hard,” my mom said to my dad. “You’ll be needing quite the dowry to get rid of this one. We’ll probably have to raise a couple of pigs and maybe herd some sheep.”

At this point, I needed a micropipette to measure my level of self-confidence. Perhaps my freshman biology teacher could lend me one.

Gathering up what was left of my dignity, I put my plate in the dishwasher and headed upstairs. “Sorry, Tarah,” my mom pseudo-apologized. “It’s just that you look a lot more at home in your lacrosse shorts and a T-shirt than in a skirt.”

Thanks, mom. I’ll keep that in mind.

The next time I want to wear a skirt, please remind me to stay inside. Because waiting out there in the harsh reality of existence are people like my mom, ready to pounce and rip to shreds the fragile self-esteem of a teenager, much like a hyena would.

It’s a cruel world we live in today – nothing is safe anymore, not even your own home.

Tarah Knaresboro is a senior at Leland High in San Jose. Her column, “Tarahfying Thoughts,” is published on this blog the second Monday of every month.