I is for Idols

While I don't remember the person or the infraction, I remember the moment clearly. I was out to lunch with my three impressionable girls.  The Disney Channel, and its many leading ladies, were the focus of many starry-eyed gazes.  Over dessert, one of my girls spoke, "Did you hear about *Insert Idolized Actress Here*? I heard that she got arrested for *Insert Infraction Here*."  It could have been drugs, it could have been a DUI.  It doesn't really matter.  What mattered was the immediate dousing of the light in their eyes, the understanding that the person they had held up as wonderful and amazing and WOW... was maybe not as wonderful as they had previously thought.  As a mom, I sighed.  As a fellow girl, and maybe just person, I was sad, knowing this wouldn't be the first time.


... because we do it, too, don't we?  Even as grown-ups, even when we know in our heads that the people we idolize (whether they be sports figures, actors, musicians, authors, etc) are really just normal people, there is something that dies in us just a little bit when we're faced with their very real humanity.  We want them to be "more than," we want them to be worth the devotion we give them.  And when we find out that maybe they're not, when they lose some of our respect, it's sad and it's hard and it's disappointing.

And maybe that's inevitable and just a part of life.