Teenage Boys: Can't Live With Them and There's Nowhere to Hide the Bodies

I'm an easygoing parent. So is Grumpy. We like to consider ourselves friendly, fun and relaxed. Others think we might need a few more medications to be compatible with society. Either way, there is one topic that we simply do not enjoy. It doesn't matter how common it is becoming or how normal it's supposed to be. When it's brought up, we get horrific chills and begin to gasp for air. Grumpy, in all his liberal glory, begins to look like he might consider owning a gun. We start going over in our heads all of the rules that we will have to implement over the next 5 years. The subject is a sore one and it is becoming far too common around this house.

Teenage boys.

Now don't get me wrong. We want her to eventually go off and get married and spend forty-three hours a day in her own bathroom. Trust me. This is on our must-happen list for our lives. We just want those important other things to happen first. College. A job. Security and stability of her own. Her 35th birthday.

When we put her back in public school this year we did so with the hope that she would succeed. We sent her off on that first day telling her to go out there and make some friends. Three days later she came home and announced her boyfriend and that they were going to the dance together. Excuse me, what? You have a huh? I think I had something in my ears. Can you repeat that please?

Yes she had a boyfriend in three days. Complete with the whole do you want to go out, mark yes or no. As of now (about a month or so into it) they spend much of their school day together trying to find ways to embarrass each other. Just Friday he finally added her on Facebook. That worries me because they are now going to communicate outside the confines of middle school. It does however give us ample opportunity to keep up with said boyfriend and see that he's a decent and upstanding citizen. I will admit that I was kind of won over by the whole humiliating each other at school thing. It sounds so much like something I would do.

That being said, she has also been asked out by other boys. That same Friday that brought her Facebook Friend also brought her newest request. A boy that had her phone number, which I had no clue about, sent her a text and asked her out. Again complete with the whole yes or no thing. She came to me for advice on how to turn him down without being mean.

So there I sat, no liquor in the house, trying to decide exactly how my child took my words of go make friends to mean this. I said friends. As in giggly girls. As in sleepovers and talks on the phone. Not friends as in will you date me.

After much thought I have decided to make room in the back yard. There are a lot of bodies I'm going to have to do away with. She will make it to thirty-five. Now where is my duct tape........