When it comes to parenting teens I've got a motto. If nobody went to jail, nobody went to the hospital and the cops weren't at my door - I don't need the details.
I had to pull that one out of my ass when the oldest was around 16 and telling me about stuff he had already done that made me almost ill with worry.
So one night The Polish Guy and I are having a family dinner, my family and the sister that pretty much raised him. I happened to mention my theory to parenting teens. So she trotted out one of her teen parenting horror stories, because we've all got them right?
Picture her, laying on one of those air matresses in the middle of her above ground pool.
Her boys are behind the barn, playing with a bow and arrow. But she doesn't know that.
Next thing, one of her boys is at the side of the pool making conversation with her and checking out the bottom of the pool.
Seriously - if you're raising teens with dangly bits, you're just so damn grateful to have them actually talking to you that you won't notice much else. Your brain is too busy trying to figure out how to keep the convo going.
They never figured out why that pool always lost water until years later - when the full story came out.
Picture two teenaged boys behind a barn, fucking around with a bow and arrow. One of the arrows goes up and over the barn roof.
Of course the teenaged boy is going to run around the barn - only there's mom - on an air mattress in the middle of the pool. His arrow? Nowhere to be found.
Did it go in the pool?
So he goes and makes conversation with his mom. There's the arrow - stuck in the bottom of the pool.
The arrow that just missed puncturing either his mother, or the air mattress she was lying on.
Take a second to picture an air mattress with your mom jetting around. Propelled by escaping air.
He did the only thing possible - at least in the teenaged boy brain. He waited until his mom was done sunbathing and retrieved the arrow.
And then Never. Said. A. Damn. Word. about why the pool was always losing water.
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PS If you have no parenting war stories from raising teens, I'm trying really hard to not hate you.
I have no horror stories about teens but my daughter is not a completely normal teen and she's only 13. My son is only 11. Im sure he will give me many heart attacks.
ReplyDeleteI'm convinced that the brain of a teenaged boy occasionally goes on vacation and forgets to take it's body with it.
DeleteThe horror stories about my son are pretty mild at this point, mostly involving how badly his room stinks and going to war with him in regards to wearing clothes that don't make him look like he spent the night in a dumpster. But he's 13 so I'm sure the really heinous shit is just around the corner
ReplyDeleteFor mine 15 and 18 were the ages stupid took over their brains.
DeleteI thought for sure that story was going to end with someone appearing next to the pool with an arrow suck in his foot. I know a lady and her 16 year old son appeared in her bedroom at midnight to announce they needed to go to the emergency room because he'd been at Boy Scouts that afternoon and shot himself in the leg with one. But never mentioned it until midnight. Rather than announce his stupid mistake, he'd pulled the arrow out and tried to shake it off including finishing with Boy Scouts, eating dinner, goofing off after dinner and going to bed. But the pain got so bad he decided he couldn't hide it anymore and a doctor might be a good idea. Genius.
ReplyDeleteAnd that sounds exactly like something a boy would do.
DeleteMy oldest is just about to turn 11 and my other little girl is 6. Needless to say, I am terrified of the teen years...
ReplyDeleteHugs!
Valerie
Who knows - yours might be perfectly fine. My brother never pulled too many stunts.
DeleteHahahahahahahahaha! OMG...I'm so glad you escaped injury. Maybe it's better never to know about these things! Hahahaha!! --Lisa
ReplyDeleteExactly! If nothing bad came of it - it's better to find out years later when you'll be able to laugh about it.
DeleteThe exception to that rule would be when I was a teen and my friends mom found out for the first time that her canary got ate by the cat because my friend wanted to see what would happen if she put the cat in the cage with the canary....
Ugh, as soon as I read "boys...bow...arrow" my stomach sank because I thought something awful was coming. Someone with an arrow in their head or something. But oh, it's nothing, just hundreds of dollars worth of damage to a pool. Speaking of pools, as a youth, my parents freaked out after catching me jumping off the roof of our house into a shallow (6 feet deep) pool. It was worth the grounding.
ReplyDeleteSee? Everybody has at least one of these stories. We laugh our asses off of them later as long as nobody lost an eye.
DeleteOh wait, I poke fun at those ones too.
That's scary creepy! So glad no one was hurt.
ReplyDeleteBy the time I heard the story it had happened so long ago that I had to laugh my but off. The stuff boys will get up to!
DeleteCause it ain't fun till somebody looses an eye, right? RIGHT?!?! Oh gawd, I fear for my future.....
ReplyDeleteI look at it this way - every parent has at least one of these tales. Whether it was something they did or something their now grown children did. Most of the time, things work out fine at the end.
DeleteFor me even as I'm laughing my ass off at someone else's memories of asshattery, it's reassurance. Someday all of this stuff that drives me wild now, will be the memories we trot out at family dinners. Remember when....and then we'll all laugh together.