I’m not ready for this. My daughter is going to be the death of me.
Mandy didn’t kill me with the nine months of puking or the preeclampsia when I was pregnant. But she may finish me off with the teenage-itis. If I don’t die of stress related to all the crabbiness, it’s going to be over the boys she attracts.
So we go to the tractor pull at the county fair so Mandy can see a tractor that is owned by a friend’s grandpa. Mandy and her friend go off so they don’t have to look “uncool” sitting with her mom and her friend’s parents. As we sit there, I see a couple boys standing up at the fence right in front of us. The boys keeping looking back over their shoulders and smiling and talking to one another. I think to myself, that’s odd that they keep looking over at the concession stand -- the tractor pull is in the other direction. Whatever. Boys are dumb.
But the boys stay in this spot and they continue to look over their shoulders and talk and laugh. It’s starting to become distracting. As this continues to happen, I follow their eyes over to the concession stand. Oh crap. Yep, it’s my daughter and her friend. There they are, all smiles, doing the hair flip, pretending to watch tractors. And the boys are just Mandy’s type: decked out with camouflage seed corn hats and boots. Country boys with cell phones seem to seek out my daughter wherever we go.
But, I’m thinking, OK, maybe they are checking out my daughter’s friend. Maybe they are just looking. I watch a few more tractors go, and I look over, and the boys are gone. One guess where they went. Yep, one of the guys is shaking my daughter’s hand. I smack my friend on the shoulder and tell him to go take care of that, and he just laughs. Thanks Todd. Someday I’ll return the favor.
And it only gets worse. He asked her out to a dance. And he’s 18. When you turn 18, you know how to spell “jail bait,” right? But Rick quickly put an end to that discussion. I believe he went online to order a t-shirt that says “My dad is 6’4’’ and has a concealed carry permit.” (At least, he’s working on getting the permit, but that’s beyond the point.)
We all went to the mall today, and Rick and I can not believe how many smiling boys she encounters. Of course, she is pretty oblivious. And that is just fine. I don’t want her to get conceited. She always says, oh mom, they totally aren’t interested. Hmmm. We’ve also been jokingly told at midget football practice that Mandy is not allowed to watch the practices by some of the football coaches. If she comes along, she has to stay in the car. Really. The boys have a hard enough time paying attention without any additional distractions. Once again, this is not completely new information.
So now we’ve been talking about dating at our household and the dating rules. I always believed when I was growing up that the same rules that I grew up with would apply to my daughter. They seemed so strict then, but now they aren’t strict enough.
These are the rules established by my aunts that my father followed to the letter. There was no dating until you were 16. Of course, a date officially meant having a boy pick you up, take you out, and then bring you home. At 14, my aunts established that a girl should be able to meet a boy someplace. There was no picking up or dropping off. But at least you could meet someone at a movie or a homecoming dance. At 15, you could have take-homes. You had to have your parents take you to the dance, but the boy could take you home. And then at 16, you were ready for the big time. I always had a problem with the logic, because I questioned who the 14 and 15-year-old boys were dating until the girls in my class turned 16. That was not my dad’s problem.
But here is my current problem. I turned 14 when I was a freshman in high school. Most of the boys I was interested in were my age, although I did go to prom my freshman year with a senior. Not sure if I’m going to mention that to my daughter. My daughter will turn 14 in two months and she will still be in the 8th grade. She’s had boys interested in her who are much older than she. In fact, shopping at the mall today I surprised the salesgirl who asked what high school Mandy was going to by telling the salesgirl that Mandy was only 13 and in the 8th grade. The girl said she never would have imagined that. Mandy is tall and very curvy. I did not look like that until I was a senior in high school.
So my question is, what do you do with a girl who is a little older and a little more developed than the other girls in her class? I know, I know, she should focus on school, and her friends, and her sports. And she does that; she has straight A’s and she has a sports practice or game almost every night of the week.
But we also want her to have fun. And she needs to have a little fun; her ex-boyfriend is just starting high school and is hitting on all her friends. She stays away from Facebook and texting most of her friends because she doesn’t want to know about it. But still all she hears about is how hot he is and how funny he is and how all the girls are in love with him. Ex-boyfriends can be the pits.
It’s a difficult time in her life. She is one of two girls in the 8th grade at a small parochial school in Lincoln
Well, 18-year-olds are out of the question. And 13 and 14-year-olds have no idea she is their age. It’s a problem I have no pat solution for. For all my blogging, nothing really comes to mind.
One thing I do know, it will all work out in the end. God has a plan and He will match her up with the people who He chooses to match her up with. Nothing I can do will change His plan. I just have to have faith that it all works out and leave it in His hands. I didn’t find the right boy until I went to college. Neither, probably, will she.
But until that time, she needs to have faith and keep having fun. And Rick and I need to keep holding down the fort and getting that concealed carry permit. As we come to the end of this blog my final question for the reader is, do you know of any private schools that ban camouflage and cowboy boots? Do you register by phone or can you do that online?
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper Doesn't the dad in this video so remind you of Rick?
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