I've given some thought as to what this blog should be about. I've decided it's about me. So, if it's something towards the book project, then that's what it'll be. If it's a ranting, raving observational thing (much like my weekly column used to be), then so be it.
This is what I'm thinking about today:
A friend posted on Facebook yesterday that her 11 year old daughter proclaimed it was time to shave her legs. After all, she's in middle school now. It seems that oftentimes as parents, we think kids are all gung-ho on growing up and wanting to do things they aren't old enough to do. As parents, there's one thing we forget - we did the same dang thing.
After I spent a few days listening to that collection of cassette tapes recorded at slumber parties with my friends back in my middle school days, I found myself somewhere between amused and abhorred. Sweet Jesus in a jumpsuit, for a bunch of midwest sheltered youngins' who went to church on Sunday in the early 80s, we sure talked about sex A LOT.
A favorite, it seemed, was to play the, "How far have you gone?" game. Well, since the majority of us might have snuck a kiss or held hands with a boy (the majority not including me), that game lost its appeal because there was no dirt to dish. This evolved into the, "How far would you go?" game. It was outright scandalous to admit which boy you might want to kiss, and how old you would have to be before you would do "it."
I cringed when I listened to our comments, listing off the bases and saying, "4th base, all the wayyyyyy home" like Kevin Bacon said in "Footloose" comparing sex to the carseat going "all the wayyyyy back," if you know what he means. Truthfully, if you'd asked us the previous year while still in the protective walls of elementary school about bases, we likely would have started talking about playing kickball on the playground at Poplar Grove, and how you have to be careful running to home (yeah, as if I ever got that far in kickball or with boys) so you didn't run into the big tree behind home base.
A girl we met in middle school was knowledgeable. I mean she really knew things about sex, and she wasn't afraid to share the nitty gritty. I know somewhere in the recesses of my footlocker o'crap, there's a tape with a sex story she wrote about another friend getting it on. The finer details of the middle school porn tale escape me, and for this I'm likely thankful, but I do recall a line about "zip grip, pull tab, crotchless panties." While I couldn't quite wrap my young mind around what exactly that meant, and I kept trying to mentally picture what those drawers would look like, I take some solace in knowing now that it still doesn't make much sense.
My friendship with this girl came and went during the remainder of my public school days. Some years, we were friends. Other years, we weren't. While I remained close with those I'd formed an early friendship with, it seemed my circle of friends rotated depending on who was in my History class or who had the same lunchtime. When she wasn't teaching me to put on eyeliner or enlightening me on making out, she tried to kill me. Teenage girls with cars that go fast are never really a great idea. Neither are a couple teenage girls riding in the back of a pickup truck at highspeeds on a crisp fall evening, that may or may not have done donuts in a churchyard.
I'm not blaming this girl for ushering me into the world of the mysterious and unknown because I think it's the natural course of things for a young, curious kid. I did my fair share of stupid before she came along, and she didn't trigger my desire to hurry up and grow up. I was already in a hurry. My friend mentioning her daughter's desire to shave reminded me of this.
At about the fifth grade age, I decided I needed to shave. The hair on my legs was blonde and fine, but this didn't stop me from digging through the medicine cabinet to find my dad's razor. If safety was an option for razors at the time, my dad still lived life on the edge and used the double-sided blades that were, well, as sharp as a razor.
I turned the bottom of the handle, which opened the top of the razor like a mouth. Examing the blade in the razor, I decided I needed a fresh one. I lathered myself up with some shaving cream, using probably half the can. With the precision of someone who'd been doing it for years, I took my first swipe with the razor up the middle of my shin.
Then it hit me. Oh man, that stung. Was shaving supposed to hurt? I looked down at my leg. The mounds of shaving cream around the area I'd tended to was turning a shade of pink. I was bleeding. I glanced at the razor, and there it was. My flesh. A four inch piece of my flesh that rolled up on the razor. I'd peeled my flesh like I was using a vegetable peeler on a carrot.
I don't know if it was the blood or the piece of my skin that was once on my body and now on the razor, or the burning from the shaving cream entering my wound, but darn if I didn't get a little woozy. I cleaned myself up and put about six bandages in a row to cover my wound, and swore I'd never shave my legs again. I still have a faint scar.
So, this need to hurry up and grow up, and do grown up things and talk about grown up stuff certainly isn't anything new. We did it. Our kids do it. Our grandkids will do it. Oh, to be young and stupid and needing to have the crap smacked right out of you by a well-meaning adult.
No comments:
Post a Comment