Holy Buck, Fatman!

Short Round turns 13 on Wednesday.

Remember when you were a teenager?  Awkward feelings, conflicts on identity. yeah—I’m right there with you.  I wouldn’t revisit that time of my life if you paid me a million bucks, either. But, seriously—remember? It was hell. Now I am facing the uncharted territory of parenting a teenager myself.  Paybacks can be a real bitch—I hear that a lot. I think that’s a big fat lie. Paybacks are a bitch if you let them happen in the first place.

Morgey over at Tres Bizzare started a conversation about teens and the appropriate age for dating.  She tells us of  her own experience while a teen:

My love life was severely limited by my parental units when I was 14 (because before then boys weren’t interested in me, even though I was definitely interested in them, but due to crippling shyness, extreme awkwardness, and general weirdness I was never successful in obtaining a boyfriend prior to 14). Once I did get the guy, I, of course, chose a boy with a mowhawk, a weird name, and a penchant for shocking all adults within earshot, so it didn’t take long for them to ban me from seeing him. In turn, I made sure I saw him every sneaky chance I got.

Classic example  of what I call the Romeo & Juliet effect: If it’s forbidden, it’s WAYY AWESOME, THRILLING AND FEELS GREAT! I knew a lot of girls who were banned from various things and they all did it anyway. Lesson learned. Banning doesn’t work.

However, lets examine my trainwreck. I wasn’t banned from seeing the weird/idiotic guy that I dated at age 18. (no guy was interested in me until then.) My parents couldn’t really tell me that I couldn’t see him. I was 18 and could legally see him whenever I wanted and they knew it. So, instead of banning me, they figured I get it out of my system, dump him and move on.

Oh were they so wrong.  If they didn’t ban me from him, how could they allow me to go as far as I did with the idiot?

Dating as an adult is complex, we all know that from our own past experiences. Dating as a teenager is a strange world of  learning about our sexuality, testing our limits and creating those needed boundaries. Without a decent guide, teens are lost. The problem isn’t that we aren’t decent parents, it’s how we approach the situation and effectively allow them to experience dating while learning to make the right choices about all those weird feelings they are experiencing. To make matter worse, we have to do this without being intruding, overbearing bags of dorkiness.  Therein lies the challenge!

We all look back at our teen age mistakes and wonder what we need to do to make sure a generational repeat is minimal.  We pick apart our past decisions and try and pinpoint that moment when all went downhill and how our parents could have prevented it. The truth is, they may have not been able to prevent it entirely, but they might have been able to minimize the effects.

I know now that a lot of my decisions regarding the generous donator of Sperm wasn’t because of rebellion. It was because I had a very LOW self esteem. It was a result of a number of forces that could have been discussed before I started dating him. I know that if I were to have learned about these things before I got in too deep with him, I would have known the warning signs. Would I have dumped him like they thought? probably not, but I might have been able to get rid of him earlier then I did. I would have had a clue that hitting wasn’t what boyfriends did to their girlfriends.

By dissecting my past, I think I might have a bit of an insight into what advice I will send Short Round into the world with. It will be advice I don’t expect her to follow all of, but I can only hope that I send her fourth with a basic knowledge of what is acceptable behavior and what isn’t. She will probably fall in mean green love with some dashing boy who will flip her mind out. I can only hope that I am able to have done my job with teaching her about thinking logically when something doesn’t seem  right.