Happy new year, kids!

A recent bulletin to my 3 hunnert and some myspace frens:

1. A bloodspattered emo myspace profile does NOT make you edgy or angsty. To anyone who has lived more than 19 years on this planet, it makes you look silly, at best. Getting "attention" is great. Being taken SERIOUSLY is way better. Saying fuck every third line doesn't make you more intense. Being articulate and confident makes you worth listening to. Bleeding is not a marketable talent. Get a useful hobby.


2. I don't care if you're bi. I'm frickin happy for you. But do NOT tell me you're bi, but you're not gay. If you're bi, you're gay, but simply less discriminating. If you sleep around, you're a slut, whether you're into chicks, dudes or sheep. Sluts are bad. Love is good. If you love a duck and the duck loves you, I'm happy for you both. I don't want to see pictures of you loving the duck any more than I want to see pictures of my parents making me. *gak*


3. You're whiter than Marilyn Manson. You're not from the hood, you're not even from a big city. Someone in your family probably owns cattle. For fucks' sake, stop trying to act gangsta. Violence isn't sexy. Calling women bitches and ho's is not bad ass. Getting a proper education and being successful is the shit. I highly recommend it. Unless you plan on bagging my groceries, go to college. Pay for it yourself instead of drinking away your parents' dreams.


4. Um, 13 year old girls are not "sexxiii" ... people who think that are called pedophiles, and get ass-raped daily in prison. Yes, we are aware you have hormones. You also have control, like when you use a fork or a spoon to eat dinner rather than ripping at raw meat with your hands. You should not be having sex if you're too young to VOTE "pro-life" or "pro-choice." I've got MANY friends with their own living proof that "birth control" is a sorry joke.


5. When your parents were your age, they may not have had MP3 players and internet porn and meth labs, but they dealt with being teased, not fitting in, being too short or too tall, too fat or too thin, not rich enough, not pretty enough, not athletic enough, and every other asinine high school piece of bullshit that you guys deal with -- and survived. They didn't wear the right clothes, their parents didn't drive the right cars. And they probably don't know the names of any of the jerks that messed with them, but still talk to the same FRIENDS who accepted them the way they were.



Teenagers really aren't that scary after all. The thought of them making the same mistakes as you did -- or worse -- now, that's frightening. Knowing that they think you're mean and strict and full of shit and don't know anything, because you try to help, that's frustrating. The knowledge that you can't keep them from learning things the hard way, that's just heartbreaking.


To all my teen "friends" with love ...
from the mom officially dubbed "Oh Mighty Evil One" ...
(an honor I cherish, because I care about what my kids are doing, where, and with whom, and I always will, and sometimes they'll hate me for it, and some day they'll understand)