Kids Say the Darndest Things

When kids are young, they love to share things they’ve learned with their parents. I remember those days well. My daughters, E and S, always seemed eager to tell me about school. Maybe it was something that happened on the playground, or a lesson about their favorite animal, or maybe learning about the moon or the planets. Everything was new to them, and they were pure and innocent and curious.

Now, my two girls are teenagers, and while they probably tell me way more than their friends tell their parents, it is just not the same. Maybe it’s because, at 16 and 14, they are already a bit jaded and burned out from too much homework and being able to tell when assignments are a waste of time. Maybe it’s because they are not learning anything new that’s worth mentioning. Truth be told, there is less excitement over, say, logarithms then there would be over manatees. Even the stories of their classmates are more shocking than amusing. Let me illustrate that point for a second.

S (about two weeks ago): Hey Mama, you know that boy who is always looking at my butt? Well, he got suspended for a week for making Lean in the bathroom. I won’t have to deal with him breathing on my neck in math! Praise the Lord!

Lean, for those of you who are neither the parents of teenagers nor in the hip-hop community, is a recreational beverage involving codeine cough syrup, Sprite or Mountain Dew, and a Jolly Rancher candy. Also, this boy likes to make my daughter uncomfortable regularly. It’s not just her and not just that boy; it’s kind of how a lot of middle schoolers interact with each other. Perhaps you remember?

Here’s another one.

E: Hey Mom, guess what happened at school today. This girl got into a big argument with this asshole boy that no one likes and today someone spray painted a large blue dick on the side of her car and it was probably him cause he’s done that kind of thing before. And her car’s white! Ha! That shit isn’t coming off without a fight.

These are the teenage equivalent of what happened at school today. It’s enough to make you not want to ask anymore. The stories tend to involve girl fights, drug arrests, or naked snapchats from the 8^th grade mattress back that the whole school sees. We have moved past the conversations about showing kindness and compassion or not joining in on the gossip because what if it were them. According to both of them, all the stories are true, all the time. And sometimes they are documented, so even if they do sound fucking ridiculous, they can still be true.  They reassure me they don’t talk like this at school, but save it up for me when they get home.

I don’t really feel reassured.

For the record, my kids go to pretty good public schools. Mostly affluent area of town, lots of overachievers and competition for good colleges and honors and AP classes. Also lots of entitled brat narcissists with Jeep Wranglers and a pocketful of Mom and Dad’s prescriptions. Seriously, what is the definition of a good school today?

Every once in a while, however, they will come home with something new they learned, and it’s almost magical, that despite the fact that they, nay, all teenagers, know everything, they can still learn something new.

E, who is almost finished with her sophomore year, came home all excited a few weeks ago. Normally she comes home and scowls, eats anything she can find in the pantry, and then lumbers upstairs to sleep it off. Sometimes, she comes home and cries. Excited is not usually what the coming home looks like.

E: Hey Mom, do you know how sloths mate?

Me: Um, no. Should I?
E: Yes, you should. I’m going to tell you all about it. It’s really cool. The female sloth gets all worked up, but she is too lazy to leave her tree, right?
Me: Right.
E: So to let the male sloths know she is ripe and ready, she starts to scream, like this.

E emits this high-pitched screech. It was quite unpleasant, like a girl who sees a bug in her bathroom or when two girls run into each other at Target. Here is an actual sloth making the same sound:

Me:  I get it, you can stop now. So then what happens?

E: Well, she just hangs from the tree, screaming like that. And then a male sloth might hear her and think, oh snap, it’s time to smash…
Me: Where did you learn this, exactly?
E: Just wait, so he gets out of his tree and follows the scream sound until he finds her.
Me: And then what happens?
E: They smash.
Me: When did smash become a thing?
E: You’re old. It was always a thing.
Me: So what do they do?
E: They mate. I told you.
Me: Well, what’s so special about sloths mating? I thought that was the point of the story.
E: It was mostly the scream.
Me: Ah. Thanks for sharing that. Great story.
E: Why don’t we have anything good to eat?

If you have little kids, talk to them every day. Act interested in all the stories. Comment and really participate. Because one day in the not -too-distant future, those stories will either stop altogether or morph into something you aren’t sure you want to hear.

 

Going Above and Beyond

If you are one of the few, the proud, who read my blog regularly, you may already know I am not a fan of flying. Unfortunately, I seem to have passed on this fear to my teenage daughter, E.  She has been scared of flying since early childhood and has not really gotten over it, even after our trip to Europe last summer. Like me, however, she can tolerate a few hours with the help of a Valium or Xanax, because at the end of the day, if you want to go anywhere, sometimes you have to nut up and strap in.

Spring break was a few weeks ago, and E really wanted to visit her best friend, AJ, who had plans to spend the week at her father’s house in southern Florida.   Last summer, E flew down to spend the week with AJ, and it went well, so well that she was ready to fly again. I bought her a plane ticket and lamented the fact that this was the first time she would be going on a spring break trip without us. I wasn’t too worried about any sort of “girls gone wild” scenario because AJ’s dad doesn’t put up with too much. All I had to do was get her on the plane, and I knew things would be fine.

The Friday of her 5:30pm flight on Allegiant Airlines, E spent most of the day packing, repacking, showering, and putting on make-up. She also allowed plenty of time to get extremely nervous and snap at everyone. About an hour after lunch, she received a text saying the flight was delayed and would not leave until 6pm. It wasn’t a major problem, more of a minor inconvenience, especially since my husband and I were supposed to close on our mortgage refinance at the same time.  We figured she had to be there early anyway, so it wouldn’t present a conflict.

Around 3pm, E got another text from the airline. The flight was now delayed until 7:30pm. Her anxiety could handle a small delay, but the second one pushed her into the world of panic. She was convinced she wasn’t going to be able to leave, and Allegiant doesn’t fly every day, which meant the next flight wouldn’t be until Monday, two days before AJ was going to leave her father’s house. Therefore, spring break, and life, was ruined. Tears followed, lots of them.

I tried to get her to calm down. We did the best we could with the chilling and relaxing and reapplying of makeup until about 5:30. She never got another text from the airline, so I drove her to the airport, armed with a Valium to take around the time she made it to the gate so it could kick in around boarding time. I had plenty of time to get back home for the refinance closing.

Before she got out of the car, she received a text from the airline. The flight was delayed by ten more minutes. I told her everything would be fine, to take a deep breath, give me a hug, and get out of the car.

I hated to leave her there alone, but she is sixteen, and a fairly experienced traveler.  She knew what to do. She could handle it. She had her ID and her boarding pass and her carry-on luggage with the proper dimensions and weight. She also had a special gift bag I hid in her suitcase, filled with Easter candy and travel sized beauty products for a fun surprise on Easter morning.

Unfortunately, the TSA ruined the fun surprise. After her bag was scanned and she walked through the screening thing at the security check, they pulled her to the side and asked her what was in her bag that was obstructing the scanner.  She said she had some feminine hygiene products in there.  The TSA agent doubted the pads were a red flag, if you will, and made her unzip the suitcase. He saw the Easter bag, peeked inside, and asked her if she knew what was in it. She admitted she did not. He said thanks to that bag he had to pat her down, which is the most action she has ever gotten.

After the TSA was satisfied she wasn’t going to bring down the airplane with a Cadbury Crème egg, she made her way to the gate, and about ten minutes before boarding, she took her Valium.  As she sat there in a bit of a haze, shit got real.

The gate agent began boarding the flight by zones. E was in the last zone, so she sat and watched and waited. About 2/3 of the people boarded the plane.  Suddenly, the pilot came storming through the gate door, turned around and yelled for everyone to get off the plane, and then screamed that the flight was cancelled because the crew flew too many hours. He stomped off towards the exit before anyone had a chance to ask what was going on.  The gate agent picked up her PA microphone and announced that the flight had been cancelled and that no compensation would be given for stranded passengers, who should head to the ticket counter for more details. She thanked everyone for choosing Allegiant and put down the microphone.

Everyone was not thankful they chose Allegiant. People started yelling and screaming at each other. One man pushed his wife into the gate agent. She shoved back. An angry man punched a hole in the wall. People threw water bottles.  It was E’s first riot.

By this point, E was well under the influence and did not think to take out her cell phone to record it. She tried to gather up her purse and luggage, but she tripped and her bag dumped everywhere. She got down on her hands and knees to collect her things around the same time most of the passengers angrily headed to the ticket counter. Her things, and indeed her person, were trampled in the process. She shoved her stuff back in her purse and got on the escalator. When she tried to put her suitcase down on the step in front of her, she lost control of it, and it tumbled down to the first story. When she got to her, she grabbed it and started to cry.

One man noticed her in tears and asked if she was okay. She snapped, “Do I look okay to you?” and sat down to cry more and text me.

I was signing my name a million times on a bunch of meaningless papers when she texted, but luckily we quickly finished up and got to the airport not long after the riot. My husband stayed in the car at the curb (we live in a small city, where such things are still possible), and I found E standing in line with the rest of her flight mates. One ticket agent was at the counter, yelling at a passenger who was yelling at her. We stood there a while trying to figure out what was going on, and then the agent barked at the line to come back at 9:30 in the morning for boarding passes because the flight was rescheduled for the 11:30 the next day.

She left the next day, after waiting in the ticket line for over an hour, because even though the Allegiant representative said to be there at 9:30, the morning’s ticket agent didn’t start to check in the passengers until after 10:30. She had another Valium, and it wore off by the time she was on the beach in Boca.

I don’t like to fly because I don’t like the way it feels. I don’t like the noises, and I don’t like being trapped with a bunch of coughing strangers and crying, seat-kicking children. What I really don’t like, however, is how unpleasant air travel has become. Gone are the days when flying, nay, travel was an event. People don’t dress up anymore. There is no silverware or little plates or even food. No one speaks with a mid-Atlantic accent.

Instead, it is like a Greyhound in the sky. If you are lucky, no one is strung out on bath salts next to you. Hopefully the toilets still flush. If you are lucky, you might arrive the same day, but one never knows, does one? It all sucks, from the first vague text to the nonexistent customer service to the belligerence of the other passengers. And no amount of Valium can fix any of it.