Is It True?

The phone rang way too early in the morning, I was still fast asleep and still slightly hung over from the bottle (or 2?) of Cold Duck Gina and I downed in her sisters Z the night before.

Typical, I thought. What idiot is calling at 8:00 on a Saturday morning? Like, don't they know people are still sleeping? Plus the phone was right next to my bed and just kept ringing... they just wouldn't go away. Plus my parents are going to be really pissed off if it's one of my friends calling so early. Damn it.

I rolled over and grabbed the receiver, put my head under the pillow and mumbled a grouchy "Hello?" Somebody said something but I didn't catch it because I had the thing upside down. What? I said, after turning it over. All I heard was a familiar voice asking:

"Is it true?"

"Is what true?"

I finally recognized the voice as my friend Sheila who lived one street over from me, and was thinking how totally weird it is for her to be calling me at 8:00 on a Saturday morning, because, like, we were friends, but, I mean, we weren't that close.

"I heard on the radio that there was a car accident last night and that Dina DeCaprio was killed."

"What?... No, Dina went out with Cathy last night!"

"The radio said there had been an accident..."

"No Way...that's not true.. Dina and Cathy went out last night"

"Are you sure?"

At this point I realized that I wasn't exactly sure, but I mean, there is no way Dina was killed last night, she went out with Cathy! So I said,

"Let me call Dina and then I'll call you back."

I sat there on my stupid bed in a fog for a few minutes, really wanting to just call Dina and tell her that Sheila says she's dead, and isn't that weird and kind of funny and should we be mad at Sheila for going around saying that? And Like, a 8:00 in the morning. Dina would be pissed, but she'll also think it's kind of funny.

But I couldn't make the call, and it made me mad because, like, I was being stupid, like, of course it's not true.

I'll call Cathy, I thought. She'll be pissed that I am calling so early, but just to be safe.

I dial Cathy's number and her mother answers and I say "Is Cathy there?" which is really kind of rude because it is so early but at this point I don't care, I just want Cathy to get on the phone and be pissed at me for calling so early.

But her mother says Cathy can't come to the phone, and there is something in her mother's voice that shouldn't be there, and I don't want to ask but I have to and I say "Was there an accident last night" and she says yes, and I ask if Cathy is OK and she says she wasn't hurt and then I ask about Dina and she says:

Dina died.

I just say "oh, thank you" because the tone in her voice scares me and I know that she can't bring herself to say any more and we hang up.

Follow-Up: This happened my senior year in high school. I felt I had to write about it after I opened up the newspaper and saw the headline Teen Killed in PCH Crash and then upon further reading learned that alcohol and pot smoking was suspected. I hope the adults who read this realize how very stupid teens can be at this age (I was, as were my friends) and that they really think it can't happen to them. To any teens floating by, including my own daughter and any of her friends, just know it can and does happen to you every day. That happened 24 years ago and I remember it like it was yesterday.

Kids: Prom and Graduation are coming up soon, try to make it to both. Parents: Tell your kids if they do drink, to take a cab. Because they do drink.

Parenting 201

Teenagers. What are you going to do? My daughter Gracie is downstairs sniffling and feeling sorry for herself because I am making her clean the kitchen. She pulled out all the stops to try and get out of it, but this time, I didn't fall for it! In case anyone else is dealing with a teenager type, this seemed to work:

1. First she tried the old "rearrange the mess and quietly disappear up to her room and say she did it" scam. I called her on it and told her to finish the job.
   
2. Then she tried to argue her way out of it, but I cut her off at the pass and told her that regardless of who's mess it is, (it was her mess), she is going to clean it up.
3. Finally came the waterworks, with well-timed sniffing so I would notice, and the accusatory "Nothing I ever do is good enough!" ploy, i.e. "you are permanently damaging my self esteem by daring to say that the kitchen is still dirty" guilt trip. I didn't fall for that one either, and mused aloud so she could hear me: "You are certainly putting in a lot of effort not to have to clean the kitchen." Then directly to her, "You are still going to clean the kitchen".

Guess what? The kitchen is now clean! Gracie is now in her room feeling sorry for herself, but the kitchen is clean. I told her, "Thank you, you did a good job". She grumbled something under her breath (probably better that I didn't hear it), stomped up the stairs and began her official pouting session.

That's OK, she can pout. She can feel sorry for herself. The first rounds of kitchen cleaning were NOT good enough. She knew it, I knew it, and it would have been damaging to her self-esteem if I had let it slide. (Not to mention damaging to my morning plans if I had done it for her.)

Today, I get to chalk up a victory, albeit a small one, but a victory nonetheless. As many of us know, when dealing with teenagers, you need every point you can get.

RH

Truth and Disinformation

As I mentioned in my last entry, school's out for summer (or will be soon...my daughter is done for the year and this is my son's last week). I had an interesting little conversation with my kids on the ride home from picking up my daughter from school. I had asked her how she was feeling about the school year being over, and her reply was "both happy and sad".

We then began discussing the year, and all the things that happened, how fast it flew by and so on. She then mentioned that a few kids had gotten into trouble during the year, some had been expelled, some suspended and then reverse suspended - meaning they have to stay during the summer to finish up - and we started to talk about the reasons why.

Can you guess?

One expulsion was for cheating...they take that kind of thing very seriously at her school, but the rest of the problems were drug and alcohol related. Lest you start feeling superior because "the school your kids go to don't have drug and alcohol problems", let me assure you, you are wrong. In fact, I am not even going to refer to it as a "problem", because it is so common it is really a rite of passage. These were the kids that were just stupid enough to get caught, meaning the experience was most likely new to them, and they didn't yet know how to "maintain" as we used to say.

I then launched into one of my mini-lectures (the car ride is only so long) when my daughter said, rather tenatively "it seems like everyone is getting high, and they are still doing allright". She continued to bring as an example a boy who is the sports star at the school, and pulls off straight As to boot. "He is a complete stoner and has a bong in his room". Her issue was that what she was observing in real life hardly seemed to correspond to the doomsday message being hammered into her head at school about the evils of drugs and alcohol.

Time warp! You might even say, Flash Back!

Suddenly I was back in high school and was remembering a conversation I had had with one of my "party friends". We were making fun of a list they had given us on "how to know if you had a problem with drugs or alcohol". According to their list, half the school should have been in rehab. The adults had no credibility then, and they don't have it now. Why? Because adults are not telling kids the truth. We are using scare tactics and zero tolerance which is falling on deaf ears because reality is so obviously quite different.

At what point do people go through this brain scrub that causes them to forget how things were when they were young, and start spouting off platitudes like there is no tomorrow?

I know the answer.

It is that moment of terror when you realize that your sweet little child will one day have to navigate the sometimes hellacious halls of highschool. Because we know what may happen with the boy who is a sports star and gets straight As.

RH

PS... I am planning to write more on this topic because it is so very important. So please chime in and stay tuned!