When I was around thirty, I revealed to my mom that I had smoked her Winstons behind the garage a couple of times when I was maybe six or so. She was really pissed. This even though I never became a smoker.
Just for the record,* I* don’t look at my son’s porn or have sex in his bed. But I do know he has it and we both pretend I don’t know. (The porn, that is. Well, sex too, but again, NOT WITH ME!!!) I was just trying to come up with something as icky as possible that was *emotionally *similar to the “secrets” my teen thinks he’s hiding from me. Lots of which, actually, involve “serious boundary issues” as the whole point of teenagedom is pushing and finding new boundaries as you go through individuation from your parents.
I think that my brother and I have finally 'fessed up to most of the mischief that we got into and got away with as teens… Like the time he drove Mom’s truck into the river, and I towed him out. Or the weekend that I allegedly spent at my friend’s house, and she told her parents she was at my house (she was, but my parents were out of town, so… we had an unsupervised weekend. The impetus behind our deception was that she had been asked out by a college freshman - age 18 - and even as a 17-year-old high school student, she was not allowed to date college students. So we had the lamest double date in the history of dates. Home by midnight, for pity’s sake!)
My mother laughs at what we got away with, since we survived relatively unscathed, and learned a little bit along the way (like the proper way to tow a full-sized truck out of the river!) I hope that I’ll be fairly amused when my kids start confessing their shenanigans to me…
My problem is actually the exact opposite. My mother put no trust in me, accused me of sneaking out at night, and had no faith that I would turn out to be a good person. In actuality, I never in my life snuck out. I never had sex. I never drank once, partied like a teenager, or even tried a cigarette.
She keeps trying to get me to confess all the bad things I really did when I was a teenager because she couldn’t possibly have been wrong, and nobody could possibly be as angelic as all my friends and teachers said I was.
I don’t spend much time around her anymore.
Crikey, for all the faults my mom has, this isn’t one of them.
I’m pretty sure we’ve told her everything, but usually when we all get together, we remember one more bit of mischief.
She loves the stories and laughs along with us. She always asks, “Where was I when this was happening?”
In fact, she’s taken to telling us stories of what she and my dad did when we were kids! I had NO idea they smoked pot!
And we aren’t talking hippie liberals. We’re talking Ward and June Republican Cleaver.
gee whiz…what are you embarrassed about? Surely your parents were just referring to the lack of tissues in your teeage years because… they used up all the tissues absorbing their tears!You know,…because they were so worried for your safety as you drove to the church youth group meetings, that they cried tears of joy every time you came home and kissed them before bedtime.
My stoner friends did the same stuff you describe your preppy friends doing, but instead of having money, they just stole stuff.