THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 5, 1995 TAG: 9502050031
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ELIZABETH SIMPSON
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
When the next Take Your Daughter to Work Day rolls around, I'm going to be checking the directories for castles.
My 3-year-old keeps telling me she wants to be a princess when she grows up. Small wonder considering her diet of ``Snow White,'' ``Beauty and the Beast'' and ``Thumbelina,'' all of which end in a horse ride to the palace.
I played along with her fantasy for a while. Wrapped yellow blankets around her head. Tied ``robes'' across her shoulders. Donated my wedding shoes to the cause so she'd have the proper ``clomp-clomp'' in her royal gait.
Not to mention the usual waiting on her hand and foot that I do.
But one night at bedtime, I noticed she was incorporating her princess dreams into her prayers. It occurred to me that I should step in at some point with a pot of strong coffee, before she was 17 and sending away for Top Ten Monarchy catalogs.
``You know, Taylor, that princesses are mostly in books and movies, right?'' I asked, hoping she would respond: ``Oh, sure. What I really want to be is a neurosurgeon when I grow up so I can support you and Daddy when you get old.''
But no. She got this look on her face as though I had just erased her plans for adulthood.
This wasn't going to be easy.
You kind of have to be born into royalty to be a princess and that didn't happen, I told her.
You can marry into the job, but even that's hard. You usually have to be from a family so filthy rich no one will suspect you're marrying for money.
Too late for that, too.
And another thing:
It's not exactly a happily-ever-after life, which I can only assume you're looking for. The movies never get into what happens once the princess-turning occurs.
It's not all adoring subjects and white carriages. Just look at Princess Diana.
Her Prince Charming wasn't. He turned out to be boorish, and unfaithful, and only showed up on a white horse to play polo. Her adoring subjects sold her secrets to the tabloids. And she can't take a swim in a bikini without the paparazzi snapping her photo.
The white carriage might as well have been a pumpkin for all the joy this princess got out of living at the palace.
No, princesses are best off in fairy tales, Taylor, where everything always turns out for the best and the bad guys fall off cliffs.
Life off-screen is not as clear-cut and magical. It's not the bad guys who make life miserable, but job layoffs and recessions and that guy who cut in front of you on the freeway. And there's rarely a prince on a white horse galloping up to save the day.
Something as undramatic as a good night's sleep and some personal fortitude usually gets you through to the next day.
But all those stories can wait, Taylor. For now it's OK to believe in fairies and happy endings and Prince Charmings and Cats in Hats who clean up after themselves.
There will be plenty of time later for lessons of reality, for the ambiguities of life and the fuzzy morals of the story.
But it's too late. She's already asleep.
Probably dreaming about that horse ride to the castle. by CNB