I Secretly Love Having Teenagers

Okay, I've only had 2 teenagers for 4 months.

And I've only had any teenagers at all for 19 months. (Though Ironflower started acting like a teenager when she was like 10, so I think I deserve some credit for those years)

But I feel super comfortable saying that I do love having teenagers in a way that I did not love having preschoolers - even though I actually love preschoolers. (In small doses. When I'm well-rested.) In fact, until fairly recently, I would have told you that I love children 0-11 way more than I love teenagers.

I would have been lying about the toddlers, though. Toddlers are assholes. Adorable assholes. 

I would have told you that I was dreading having teenagers and that I wished all my kids could stay kids forever. Even though Lois Duncan wrote a captivating book about why that's a bad idea. I must have reread that book 10 times when I was 13 or so. Because 13 is the worst.

But since I remember that feeling so vividly - in a way I do not remember being 2 and feeling like I would die if I couldn't wear my blue dress - it's so much easier for me to empathize with my teenagers than it ever was with my toddlers/preschoolers/elementary schoolers.

I mean, I always tried to lead with empathy and talk about feelings but. . .I had 3 kids in 4 years and not one of those kids could have ever been described as mellow or easygoing. Sometimes survival took on a great importance than empathy. Now that someone isn't always in danger of running into traffic and/or throwing a tantrum, it's a lot easier to be empathetic.

But as much as I would love to attribute enjoying my teens so much to my greater empathy and subsequent closeness, that's not the bulk of it.

The bulk is that my teenagers share my sense of humor. My really inappropriate, snarky and filled with fucks sense of humor. I'm sure it will get them into trouble some day if it hasn't already, but I'm genuinely okay with that. I love it when they make me laugh and I also love the fact that I no longer have to censor myself around them. That's what I secretly love about having teenagers.

The fact that I can leave them home alone, or make them run into the store for me or reach things out of the tall cabinets are just bonuses, I swear.

Shut Up About My Teenage Girl

It's practically a cultural norm that teenage girls are terrible.

Their tastes are insulted on the regular - think about your perceptions of "boy bands"  and other things popular with teen girls.

Heathers and Mean Girls, movies that I adore, are, in essence, movies about how cruel teenage girls are.

Chances are good that if you find a woman who hated high school, she will blame her female peers for her torment. Hell, I didn't hate high school and I've still said shitty things about teen girls, based solely on a few bad apples who are probably also terrible as adults (I don't know for sure, because I'm not friends with them on Facebook) and the stupid things I did and said as a teen. 

The first articles that popped up when I typed "Teen girls" into Google all had to do with the pressure teenage girls get to send nude pictures of themselves. The top news stories included one about a pastor who was APPLAUDED BY HIS CONGREGATION for confessing that he molested a teenage girl and one about a series of murders of teen girls that remains unsolved 50 years later. 

I had to scroll nearly to the bottom of the results page to find an article detailing what a mess the teenage brain is. (If you have a teenage girl, or a future teenage girl, I highly recommend reading the linked article). 

Couple that mess with the pressures of school, of boys you may have crushes on demanding your naked photos or other things you're not comfortable with, your dearest friends also falling apart, a society that alternately dismisses you or sexualizes everything you do and the confusion of figuring out who you are as a person. . . .

It's actually amazing that teenage girls aren't worse. 

Do you remember the Fierce Five? They were the teen girls who won gymnastics gold at the 2012 Olympics. Three of them have since come out as survivors of sexual abuse from their fucking team doctor. They were being molested at the same time as they were winning the Olympics.*

Can you imagine the kind of emotional strength it takes to do that? 

The kind of emotional strength it takes to act in a movie and be on set with your abuser. The kind of emotional strength it takes to survive and become a high school valedictorian. So many teenage girls are fighting demons we can't imagine, while maintaining their image on Instagram and their grades and their jobs/sports/hobbies and sometimes even freaking parenting. . . even though their brains are not fully developed and this is often when mental health issues first arrive. . .

and we want to call them mean or terrible or silly?

Teenage girls are amazing. Especially the ones surviving today.

I've described my teenage self as a "terrible human being" more than once. And yeah, compared to who I am now? I was pretty spoiled, thoughtless and clueless. But it's not like I was selling heroin to elementary school kids or beating up old ladies. Judging my teenage self - or any teenager - by my adult standards is unfair, to say the least.

Ironflower turned 13 last month (yeah, I can't believe it either). She likes Mean Girls and Heathers and loves to point out when she's being a stereotypical teenager. She's more Daria than Quinn, at least so far, which makes it easy to forget that when we make comments about teenagers, we're talking about her too.

But you can bet that she, and all the other teenagers and almost teenagers we love, remember our comments. They will always remember how we talked to them and about them.

*Since my first draft of this post, Simone Biles - the most amazing gymnast in the history of ever- has also come out as a survivor of that evil doctor's abuse. I am in awe of her strength. I am also horrified. If this is what happens to our most celebrated teens, what do you think is happening to regular teens?

Rental Car Companies Are Smarter Than Camille Paglia

When I started reading Camille Paglia's (if you don't know of her, think of her as this wild professor who likes to analyze pop culture obsessively and contradict people for fun) essay on under-aged drinking, I was startled to find myself agreeing with her.

It is stupid that people can quit school, fight in a war, get married, be parents and/or vote at 18, but they can't buy booze until they're 21. I mean, it's much easier to care for a bottle of vodka than it is to care for a baby. . .or even a rifle.

But then, as Camille lamented that teenager drinkers would be better off in public bars, learning to have conversations, than they were at frat parties. . .

I realized that no, I don't actually agree with Camille Paglia on something.

Camille is 67 years old. While that makes her young compared to some of the people at my gym, I think we can safely say that she hasn't been a teenager for a while.  And though I haven't either, I did spend a lot of my youth drinking. I suspect Camille was busy actually studying, or she would remember that many bars - especially the kind that appeal to younger people - are filled with fucking idiots. Karaoke? Wet t-shirt contests? Shots? Dance offs? And these are the people we think are mature enough to drink? Let 18 year olds in and there'll be people in wet t-shirts trying to drink the most shots while singing Justin Bieber songs.

Also, even people who can drink legally often attend parties. In fact, Animal House, which was based on the authors' experiences at Dartmouth in the 60s, was about a time when 18 year olds could drink in bars, yet they chose to do it at frat houses sometimes. Also, she claims that date rape has grown more common since teenagers were "forced" to start drinking in private homes. So not only is she clueless about teen party culture, she is equally clueless about date rape. First of all, it's reported more now. Second of all, it's recognized more now than it was back in the day. And third of all, date rape happens when you hang out with a date rapist - whether that's at a bar or at party. Or a library.

Camille would also like to believe that because people in Europe are more relaxed about youthful drinking, with lower drinking ages and sharing of wine at family dinners and whatnot, their teenagers don't act stupid around alcohol. This sounds logical, but we can't just rely on what just sounds logical when we write essays for national magazines (or blog posts, come to think of it). We have to do a little research and see if FACTS back up what we think sounds logical. In this case, they do not. If you don't want to read the very long study I easily found on Google, here's the summary:

Recent data from representative surveys provide no evidence that young Europeans drink 
more responsibly than their counterparts in the US. 
 A greater percentage of young people from all of the European countries except 
Iceland report drinking in the past 30 days. 
 A majority of the European countries included in this study have higher intoxication 
rates among young people than the United States and about one third of the countries 
have equal or lower rates to the United States; and 
 For a majority of these European countries, a greater percentage of young people 
report having been intoxicated before the age of 13. 

But the real reason that I think rental car companies are smarter than Camille Paglia is that they understand what she doesn't; the brain isn't fully mature until you are about 25. Now, I have known plenty of mature and wonderful people who made great decisions in their late teens and early twenties, but the law can't just apply to those people. That's why if you show up at the car rental agency and show them your Google employee i.d. and paycheck stub and stable partner and great credit rating, they still won't let you rent a car if you're under 25.

And if you can't be trusted with a rental car, should you really be trusted with booze? Or guns? Or the decision to fight for your country? Or whether to star in porn movies?

I think we should take a page from the car rental companies and move the other age limits UP to match the one for booze, not bring booze down.

Hell, maybe they should all be moved up to 25. What do you think?