Inspired by the toddler thread, I decided to start one about teens.
My husband and I went to Las Vegas when our daughter was 16. Our younger son stayed with his grandparents and our daughter stayed with a friend. We made sure that the parents knew that we were going to be out of town for a long weekend. Unfortunately, the mom worked that weekend, and the dad was unfamiliar with the evil that is a teen-aged girl…
Our daughter was extremely well-mannered Thursday, Friday, and all day Saturday. Friday and Saturday nights they “went to the movies”, “went to a bonfire”, and “saw a football game”. What they were really doing was partying at our house. I thought that everything was fine because I made sure that our daughter didn’t have a house key. Unfortunately, my husband was more gullible and let her have a key. She had told him that she wanted to let herself into the house Sunday morning so she didn’t have to go to church with the family she was staying with. “I suppose that would be all right” he said.:smack: I didn’t find out about this until after we got home.
She told the parents of her friend that she wanted to go home Sunday morning instead of in the afternoon. We would be home Sunday afternoon - what could possibly go wrong? What she was really doing was frantically cleaning the house after a weekend of partying.
When we got home, I saw the fresh vacuum cleaner marks and was immediately suspicious. Our worst fears were confirmed when our son’s friend came over Sunday afternoon (he lived in the house behind us) and said “Wow! You guys sure did have a big party last night!”:rolleyes:
The damages? A bleach spot in the family room carpeting (someone spilled the punch, and someone else poured straight bleach on the stain), a ruined beanbag chair (they decided it would be a great idea to empty the little foam balls out and jump from the stairs into the foam), and some missing kitchen utensils. I never did find my favorite ladle. I don’t even want to know…
We found little pieces of styrofoam from the beanbag chair for weeks afterward, and the cost for new carpeting came out of our daughter’s savings. She was also grounded for the rest of the semester, but still says it was worth it. Her friends called it the ‘best party weekend ever’ until they graduated a year and a half later. I honestly don’t even want to know the details.
Oh believe me, you’ll find out the best stories *after *they leave home.
One I knew about at the time happened when my older son was probably 12 or 13. I got a call in the middle of the night and it went something like this:
Police officer: This is Officer Smith, is this Contrary?
Me: Yes it is . . .
PO: Ma’am do you know where your son is?
Me: In bed?
Well of course I knew he wasn’t in bed. What I didn’t know was that Lawrence had a curfew and he’d been caught riding his bike with a friend . . . at 2 AM. I drove over to pick him up and had to take his bike apart to get it into my Civic. I just gave him the look and said we’ll talk about it when your father gets back in town. My son told me later that my calmness scared him more than if I’d ranted at him.
I didn’t think I was going to survive teenage girls. Thank the ogs that they didn’t get pregnant or worse–dead! They actually made it to where they are now, college graduates with honorable professions. It’s hard to believe these are the same girls I had to pick up in the middle of the night at the police station on more than one occasion!
Are we talking about the same town? Lawrence, KS? When were you there? I lived there for a long time and saw no evidence it was a total shithole of lawlessness.
You know there’s an extremely notorious Lawrence just a few miles from your stated new location of Boston, right? DudleyGarrett wasn’t the only one who assumed you meant the one less than 30 miles from Boston. Of course, maybe you mean a different Boston too:p
Even if you she was in a coma in a box buried under 10 feet of lead and under armed guards, if those 3 conditions are met, she’s going to have a party, no ifs ands or buts about it.
2 girls, 1 boy with the misfortune of their father marrying a woman not much older than they (that would be moi) who clearly remembered every detail of the BS she and her brother pulled at those ages and beyond.
And then three girls and two boys who had the misfortune of their father marrying a woman (again, that would be me) who had just finished a refesher course in teenage stupidity.
No one ever got pregnant or dead on MY watch, but damn, grandkids are a lot more fun. I was harder on my step-kids than they really ever deserved, but I can make up for it with their kids.
Ivygirl takes judo, and one Saturday I was waiting for her to get ready so I could take her up to the dojo.
“I’m ready!” she trills. She has her hair straightened and brushed, full makeup, freshly painted nails. I thought this a bit odd, considering she was going to judo, and she’s a bit of a tomboy, but hey, if that’s what she wants to do, why not.
I drop her off, run my errands, then swing back by to pick her up. I was a few minutes early, so I waited for her to finish up.
That’s when I noticed her judo partner…a nice looking boy about 18 or so. They were cheerfully flipping each other around on the mats and suddenly her hair and makeup made sense. :smack:
Stick me on there too. I hardly know the guy, but I know that about him, and I just heard his name shouted remonstratively in my head, the second I read that line in the OP.
The things teenagers do?? My parents went away when I was 16 and my brother was 18. They left a friend in the house to keep an eye out. She was in her 30’s. Lovely woman.
Apparently she spent 2 weeks sleeping with my brother.
Many years ago my 14 year old brother invited some of his friends over for the night. Our next door neighbor had gone out of town and had left her keys with my parents so they could look after her cats. My brother noticed the keys and he had a plan.
Around 2:00 am they took off in the neighbor’s car and started cruising the mean streets of Lexington Ky. However, as they swung through downtown, deserted in the dead of night, a police officer noticed them and thought they looked just a little too young to be driving. He couldn’t pull them over just on suspicion so he followed them a while. Finally they switched lanes while turning and he pulled them over on that.
So my parents and a couple other parents on the street got calls in the wee hours of dawn and were summoned out of their beds to go to the police station. The cop told my mother that for a 14 year old my brother was the best driver he’d ever seen and the neighbor–God rest her–decided since there was no damage done she wouldn’t press charges.
DudleyGarrett wasn’t the only one who assumed you meant the one less than 30 miles from Boston. Of course, maybe you mean a different Boston too:p