Outnumbered Two to One

Most of the time I try to keep the profanity to a minimum. I know how quickly children can take a parent’s colorful vocabulary and run with it, usually during the most inopportune times, like a trip the pediatrician’s let’s say, or during story time in Kindergarten.

Unfortunately, on occasion, the expletives slip out.

See back when I was a rebellious teen, filled to the brim with anger and angst, my word choices were determined strictly based on their power to shock and offend. I was a smart enough girl who used the F word in a very broad capacity, attaching it to nearly every phrase in my efforts to emphasize whatever point I was making.  Do teenagers ever have points?

As a parent, I’ve matured (somewhat) and come to the conclusion that my children dropping the F bomb in grade school could be somewhat detrimental to their reputations. Not to mention mine. So I generally refrain from using “bad” language in front of the children, most of the time. My husband will be the first to admit that I could use a generous lathering of the mouth with a bar of the nastiest soap available. Sometimes these words eke out without my conscious knowledge.

Last Friday though, I was on the telephone with an old friend (hi, Julie) whom I’ve known since thereabout the third grade, engrossed in conversation for the better part of an hour as I wandered through the house prepping dinner and doing minor chores. After I hung up, my teenager sidled up next to me, put a hand on my shoulder and whispered confidentially “You sure do curse a lot on the phone, Mom.”

“Er, what do you mean?”

“You were cursing a lot. I heard you.” She looked taken aback. She’d witnessed a side of me she rarely sees, unapologetically offensive and somewhat angry, nothing like the patient mom that does her laundry and puts up with her own crummy attitude.

“Aw, honey,” I began, “Stop eavesdropping on my @#%&ing conversations.”

Jeez. A little privacy would be nice occasionally.

For the record, I didn’t curse at my lovely teen, although sometimes she takes me to that dangerous edge. I was however honest with her and explained that while using these “adult” words for either emphasis or comedic effect has its merits, using them too often will give people the impression that her vocabulary is limited and her manners lacking.

Today, after much internal debate, she confided that she was going to stop using colorful language for the reasons I described. This daughter of mine, who while sassy and surly, has never uttered an expletive in our house, apparently has the mouth of a sailor when she’s at middle school.

I blame the parents.

I don’t know how they did it, I just know that it happened.

This morning I sent off three well behaved, bright eyed, neatly groomed offspring to their respective schools. I kissed their ruddy cheeks, wished them a beautiful day, and watched them skip off toward the steel reinforced double doors of their public school education.

At some point during the day, something must have gone terribly, horribly wrong, because what was returned to me after dismissal were not the cherubic darlings I’d dispatched that morning, but some angry, gritty, whiny, mouthy replacements that looked and smelled like my kids but were possibly hardened ex-convicts or perhaps mental ward patients.

Seriously.

We had such an uneventful weekend. It was quiet, it was easy, it was unexpected. Maybe it was our approach - no responsibilities, no obligations, no expectations. We lazed, we ate, we joked, we watched TV. Now suddenly it’s Monday again and everyone is supposed to snap back in to submission, acquiesce to the strict constraints of time and authority. I guess it’s enough to make anyone hostile. They had their brief taste of freedom and of course they’re thirsty for more.

Who bears the brunt of their rebellion?

Why that’s Mom of course.

Because Dad is conveniently at work, and I am left with the chore of beating everyone in to submission. I’m sure he did it on purpose.

Should it take until almost 11 o’clock for a certain brood to finish the day’s homework assignments?

No, it shouldn’t.

I blame the school. For all their guidelines and curriculum and discipline…all that boring stuff that makes school such a drag.

Like my darling teen says, “I’d love school if it weren’t for all the learning.”

Yep, it’s gotta be the public schools.

What’s worse than a single teen making mischief all by her lonesome?

Well, four teens of course.

Four lanky, giggling, squealing, smart alecky girls, who coincidentally thought they were the cat’s meow today when I dropped them off at the local movie theater to see a 7 PM showing of “Twilight”. (I completely realize hip teen girls do not say cat’s meow, or hip for that matter, I’m not a total square.)

My daughter had a blast in spite of not really caring for the film. The theme of the night was of course boys. The one thing she couldn’t get enough of. Eye candy. Or as she puts it “hot guys“. And she’s not talking about boys wearing parkas in the middle of summer either.

I love that she wants to share the experience with me. I think it’s sweet, and with her I’ve got to take the communication where I can get it. That she volunteered our house as the central location, and me to chauffer the minivan is rather flattering. But man oh man have I had my fill of teen chatter today.

Did you know the average teen girl can fit 250 words in a sentence without introducing a single mode of punctuation, except for a high pitch shrieking sound meant to express excitement, disgust, and/or hilarity?

Did you know when four teenage girls are trapped in a minivan for fifteen minutes they will all talk non-stop simultaneously over one another?

Did you know it makes a teen girl giggle to hear a grown woman say “What the flock?” when she almost rams a distracted driver who cut her off in traffic?

Did you know a gaggle of teenage girls can make you feel about ten years older than you felt when you got out of bed that morning?

I so need a nap. And maybe some hot tea. And some rice pudding.

See, I am old.

Life would be like really hard. Cause I’d have to like constantly pause mid-sentence just to like squeeze the word “like” in it at least like twenty times.

I’d have to obsess non-stop about boys noticing me in my skin tight school pants.

The muscles behind my eyeballs would hurt so bad from all the rolling they’d have to do on any given day that I’d need some kind of eyeball therapy just to get them back in rolling condition.

I’d be easily distracted by things like boys or music or music that’s made by boys in really tight pants.

I’d have to take my mom’s camera without asking so I could take weirdo pictures of myself in the bathroom I’m supposed to share with my sister, except it’s totally mine.

I’d have to pretend to be on the toilet a lot, just to get some privacy.

I would be annoyed by everyone on the planet because they’re all stupid, unlike me who is so NOT stupid.

I’d have to slam a lot of doors.

I’d live on a diet of Hot Fries and Coke and Cosmic Brownies.

I’d totally need a cell phone with a texting plan so I could send indecipherable messages to all my friends at any given time of the day or night, then I’d snicker at really inappropriate moments and when someone asked what I was laughing at, I could just roll my overstressed eyeballs and say “nothing” with a smirk.

I’d have to complain a lot about how unfair life is because I never get sick enough to stay home from school or because I don’t have my own room.

I would loathe math.

I’d have to contradict myself at least fifteen times a day on any given topic, then pretend I didn’t.

I would be completely oblivious to the time space continuum, making my perception of a two hour shower seem like just fifteen minutes.

I’d squeal for no apparent reason and say random things in the middle of other people’s conversations, like if someone is talking about the economy, I could volunteer that I love cheese.

Did someone say boys?

boysboysboysboysboysboysboys

The battle lines have been drawn. War is being waged and my daughters are once again sworn enemies. The tension is palpable, or maybe that’s the lingering scent of fried plantains in the house (we’ve got crappy ventilation). Either way, my teen and my tween are holding us hostage with their bickering.

At the heart of it is my tween’s new found strategy of completely ignoring her older sister’s existence. Indefinitely. Something that cuts my teen to her core as she considers herself, by rite of oldest child, to be the boss of everybody. And I mean everybody. To not be heard his her worst nightmare, it compounds her frustration exponentially.

More often than not I find myself siding with my tween because I’ve seen first hand how harsh her sister can be with her. Every question the tween poses, every request, every comment is met with hostility, sarcasm, and contempt. My tween is forever complaining about her sister’s mean streak, to the point where I gave her the following advice…

“Just ignore her. Ignore her when she’s being mean to you, ignore her when she’s nice, ignore her all the time.”

Oops. Er…

I didn’t actually remember uttering that little nugget of guidance. Then today after my teen’s rant about being invisible and how unfair it is for her younger sister to disregard her so plainly, I approached my tween and tried to convince her she couldn’t ignore her sister for the rest of their lives. They share a room, they share a house, they share the common bond of sisterhood.

To which my tween replied, “But you told me to do it.” Then promptly threw my words right back in my face. Oosh.

Needless to say, my teen who was sitting nearby was adequately appalled, while I attempted to back pedal in true stupid-mommy form.

I never actually expect them to listen to me, much less heed my advice. Jeez. If they were only so obedient in other arenas.