My daughter has recently gotten into watching DIY craft videos on YouTube. Her latest project that she is excited to make is an Emoji Mood Board for her bedroom door. It’s a string that is attached to the outside of your door like a clothesline. You then clip an emoji or emojis that best show how you are feeling to the clothesline. Well, I thought this idea was just brilliant. She is teetering on the line of being my sweet 11 year old girl that tells me everything that she is feeling, and a hormone raging teenager that knows everything and won’t tell me a thing without an eye roll or an attitude. And I am pretty sure that soon she won’t be able to either start or end her sentence without an “I don’t know why I am crying!” So the idea of a picture, a hint, or some insight, however small, of how she is feeling, hung on the outside of her door for me to see before I walk into her room sounds wonderful. I’d be more prepared. And then I got to thinking, wouldn’t it have been awesome if my dad had one of these when I was a kid?
Growing up with my dad was not easy. He had a very short fuse and would blow up with very little, if any, notice. It was never clear what would set him off, there really was no pattern and certainly no warning. Something could have happened at work, some “asshole” could have cut him off on his way home, there could have been leaves on the driveway that he just spent all weekend cleaning up…really, anything. It was never anything that I did (insert halo), it was most often things that were out of anyone’s control and yet I had to hear about it. Over the years, in an effort to try and be more prepared, I had subconsciously developed my own internal system to try and read his mood…the speed at which he walked up the stairs, how hard the door shut when he came in from the garage, the tone of his voice when he responded (or didn’t respond) to “Hi Dad!” when I walked in the door. Wouldn’t it have been so much easier if there was a sign hung on the front door with a? or a ? on it? Or better yet, there could be several emoji’s chained together, sending me a message or a clue as to what might have happened to put him in his often foul mood. If I had a picture or a visual cue of sorts, I could make decisions on my level of engagement, or construct my plan as to where I would escape to in the house, before I went inside.
A great example of how a Mood Board could have helped was the time he brought our dog Frou Frou (yes, poodle…only species that could carry a name like that with dignity) for a walk when he got home from work, and she apparently thought that was a perfect time to showcase her best canine paper towel dispenser impersonation. Turned out that my father did not fully appreciate her talents. How nice it would have been for me to walk up to the front door and see ? ??. This way I would have known to just walk in and go straight to my room. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Instead it played out more like “Hi Dad, how was your day?” “Fine” he said in a very short, curt tone. I knew immediately something had happened…wait for it… He paused for a couple of seconds, and then he started to say more, and as he went on he got louder and more intense. “Fine…if you call taking the dog for a walk and having to pull fucking paper towels out of her ass! with a stick! while she tries to shit! them out with the neighbors! driving by to watch Fine!…Then Yes, Fine!”
It was a lot of information to process all at once…I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I think I did both, quickly followed by an about-face and heading straight to my room, where I proceeded to cry-laughing at the thought of my dad with that stick trying to flick the paper towels out of Frou’s butt. In both cases, Emoji Mood Board or no Emoji Mood Board, I would have ended up in my room. But had I had the emojis, the clues, I would have been able to avoid the entire “conversation” part. I know now that in most cases and in healthy relationships it is best to talk about things, but sometimes a simple picture is worth a thousand words.