I think we just pegged the No Shit Meter:
WASHINGTON -- Many parents seem to be in the dark about the sex lives of their adolescents, U.S. researchers reported today. They found that 84 percent of parents they surveyed did not think their teenager was sexually active -- despite a recent government study showing that nearly half of ninth- through 12th-graders aged 14 to 18 have had sex.
But 90 percent of the 1,600 mothers and fathers surveyed said they had started talking to their children about sex, most by the time they were 12 years old.
So, either talking to your kids encourages them to try sex...or it doesn't. Thanks, Society for Adolescent Medicine, you've allowed this parent to breathe a sigh of relief.
I haven't devised a strategy for ensuring my child doesn't become sexually active too soon. We've heard advice from people like proponents of the "Cleaning the Guns When the Date Comes to Pick Her Up" school to the "Casually Mentioning Your Friendship with the Local Crime Lord" adherents. There's something to be said for all these approaches.
It's a fine line you have to walk. Remain too distant, and your kids will think you don't care who they end up rolling around with behind the bleachers. Act too maniacal and your children will never bring their dates home again.
For this reason, I'm a big fan of the insanity gambit.
Don't get me wrong, simply declaring yourself a badass or a nutcase is like giving yourself a nickname, it just doesn't work. Similarly, acting crazy in front of your daughter's suitors will eventually backfire, once the little gropers realize you're all bark and no bite. The easy way around this is doing something legitimately nuts, whether biting someone's ear off or getting really drunk and firing guns off your front porch. These are effective methods, to be sure, but they're inconveniently overt and have the drawback of being illegal. Therefore, the best way to establish your shithouse ratness is by getting caught doing something sinister while maintaining the appearance that you don't want to get caught at all.
Here's my idea. Some time before She Who Shall Not Be Named reaches double digits, I plan on going out in my backyard some summer night when I know the local kids will be about. 4th of July perhaps, or maybe when one of them is throwing a pool party nearby. While there, I'll use my trusty shovel to dig a shallow grave, with only a few low wattage droplights to illuminate the scene. I'll take my time, allowing any passing children ample opportunity to take up position around the fence, then I'll retrieve from the bushes my previously prepared mannequin wrapped in a tarp and dump it in the hole, muttering blackly to myself all the while. Then I'll fill the hole, tamp down the soil, look furtively over my shoulder, and shuffle off to the tool shed. By the time my daughter is old enough to date, I'll be well-established as That Crazy Bastard Who Buried Someone in his Backyard. Even better, the passage of time will further embellish my legend, until it's whispered that I buried an entire family behind my house. With a spork. After chewing the still living flesh from their bones.
I'm starting to enjoy this fatherhood thing.
God please give me the patience to deal with Pete and his friends! And Peenman -- I will only let your kid date mine because of his Mother, who is a good soul! Also Pete, you are not using our joint account to buy a mannequin -- So start saving those cans for some spare change.
Nope, no way would that work. If I had seen my dad burying a body, I guarantee that my curiosity could only hold out a week or so before I would be out there myself at midnight with a shovel, digging it up to see who it was. Kids love to dig.
Besides, you might hit a gas line. I prefer the nonviolent approach. When the date comes over, arrange to have a friend unsubtly lurking across the street and overtly taking pictures of everybody and everything with a telephoto lens. When you come to the door, scowl at your accomplice and tell the boy, "Oh, just ignore them." Nothing quells sinful urges like the possibility that somebody could be snapping pictures.
Unless, you know, you're into that.
I think the key isn't to make like a Crazy Bastard Dad, fun as it may be.
I think the key is to sign up SWWNBN for Dirty Street Fighting Kung Fu at the first opportunity. Why worry that she's out with some no-neck mook when her hands are registered as lethal weapons? Instead of doing the gun cleaning thing, which may get old after a while (and result in an overly clean gun), simply adorn the entry-hall to Casa Cromulent with various pictures of her winning various martial arts tournaments, and breaking boards with her pinky fingers.
The drawback, of course, comes when she realizes that she can kick Daddy's ass.
Given my daughter's prowess with the biting, I would say that come her first tooth, she will be able to kick Daddy's ass.
There is nothing you can do but educate your kids as to the very real dangers associated with sex. Because they're gonna do what their gonna do regardless of anything we parents say. Or do. You don't have to condone anything. And you're free to ground your kid forever if you catch them. (*If* being the operative word).
But more likely than not, you won't be able to cut them off at the pass. You can, however, increase the odds that they won't befall the worst case scenarios.
Once you've done that, it's all about trust and communication. And crossing your fingers.
Not a mannequin. You need to contact a local archaeologist who needs to bury a few roadkills in the backyard and cover them with flesh-eating beetles. Now they do this so that they can use the skeletons for reference in faunal analysis, but the neighborhood kneebiters don't need to know that.
Talk to Misty. She used to do this all the time.
A change in format for the weekly link round-up. A combination of a busy working week a lack of decent material to link has conspired to keep my folder of links rather thin. So instead I'm going to feature a few blogs I read on a constant basis (daily ......
| --Posted to Simon World on Aug 13, 2004 2:43 AM:. |
Pete, I can dig on the mannequin ploy (pun sort of intended). One alteration though. After the big spectacle of burying the 'body', come out the next day when no one is around, remove the 'body', leave some dark staining agent and bits of hair, shreds of clothes, etc. Really work over there imagination. If they have have no concrete evidence, it will really mess with them once they do attempt to dig it up. Give me a call, I will gladly help out by flying in, renting a van, driving over with a 'body' in a large plastic bag, meet you at the curb, and help you carry it into the garage. Then you give me the briefcase and I drive off. Set the ambience.
Dear The Wife,
This is no time for rational thought. A young woman's honor may be at stake. This never stopped most of us during our adolescence, which is why most men will grow to fatherhood being paranoid control freaks when it comes to daughters and the dating issue. Take my younger sister, one of six children, the only girl, and the youngest. And before all the women say "poor girl", you have to understand that she was perhaps the most protected girl in any town we lived in. It also helps that my dad was a 6'4" behemoth. She eventually married a football player who literally could have taken us all out, but as it turns out is a great guy. Coincidentally, they now have two girls and a boy. I pity the guys coming around that house when the dating period begins. Just remember, we [guys] have been there during the adolescent period, dealt with the rampaging hormones, and it wasn't pretty. Let the psychotic have his fun, in the end he won't be able to match the hormonal determination of teenagers.
I have two Daughters Who Shall Remain Nameless, both still in the wee single digits. Luckily, for now, they have their mother's looks and my personality. I am hoping (praying, chanting, anything it takes) that come Double Digit time, they somehow miracuously get her personality and my looks (or a sudden interest in softball).
I keep looking at my son and thinking to myself "after my whorish ways I'm supposed convince my kid that abstinance is the way to go?"
And keep a straight face?
Maybe my son needs to meet SWSNBN.
I hear her grandmother was pretty hot.