Growing up is Wicked Hard!

As my mother would say ~ "growing up is wicked hard". Yes, she is from the Boston area. No good Southern Girl would ever use wicked that way I know! I grew up in a world that was much different. My parents both worked full time. I was a latch-key kid. In the summer I would leave the house after breakfast and come home at dinner time. I rode bikes, played in the creek, got dirty and climbed trees.

In early high school my parents gave my sister and me a choice, well sort of. Get a job and buy a car of your or don't drive (because you cannot drive my car!). For a teenager that was not much of a choice. My sister and I both jumped feet first into the job market.

I jumped in at 14 to a job at York Steak House in Spotsylvania Mall (that is in Fredericksburg, Virginia for you out of town-ers that read my blog). Needless to say, I had my first car sitting in the driveway six months before I had my license. It was a really sporty car at that. A 1979 Honda Civic that I bought from my Biology teacher's husband.

Anyway, back to growing up is wicked hard... About at the age of 16, I believe the cranial rectal inversion occurred with me as it does with all teenagers. My parents were stupid PITAs (look in urban dictionary for the definition if you are not hip), school sucked (even though I rocked the good grades) and life was about boys, parties and hanging out. Keep in mine I was never a bad kid. I came home at curfew, pretended to be sober and chaste and pretty much did what my parents asked of me totally flying under the radar and letting my older sister catch most of the parental abuse (Since she was the typical rebellious teenager).

At 18, I moved away from home for my first "REAL" job.  From 18 until 25 I came home for the required family holiday meals when I did not have a work related excuse that I could use.  I just wanted to live my life independent of parental criticism and oversight.  I had enough of that  in my first 18 years (or that was my thought at the time).

I guess about at the age of 25 there must be some chemical explosion in the brain of most young people.  Most of the stupidity  and immaturity leaks out leaving room for sanity, critical thinking skills and logic.  Now don't get me wrong, there is still some stupid left in there at 25.  For some reason it takes a while for all of it to fade away.  I think by the time you hit your late 30's the stupidity levels had degraded enough to for me to make some solid life decisions.

I guess that the whole point of this blog is ~  What the hell do we do as parents of kids these days?   I guess looking back at my life, it seemed simpler than it is for children today.  We were shielded from life and the world for much longer than our children.  News travels at the speed for the internet and is often unfiltered for mass consumption.  All information must be verified, analyzed and categorized.  I wonder if that will effect the stupidity leakage for our children? I wonder if the separation induced by cranial rectal inversion is limited to personal visits, phone calls or emails.   I wonder if my daughter will blog about her childhood and look at my descriptions above and think how strange it must be to be able to go out as a child to play all day without your parent standing near by.  She does ride a bike and climb trees.  There are some things that I insist that my daughter experiences , and yes,  MUD is one of them!

~ Stephanie