Chapter Six: House with a Teen Diva - PART II

* * *

When my daughter was in high school, we had the usual mother-daughter battles. Homework, chores, time spent on the computer, bedtime, curfews and important things, like reality shows. She implored for me to share her obsession for these inane programs and I’d refuse.

They were mostly about large groups of women, attractive women, doing outrageous and embarrassing things to gain the affections of one smug guy, usually an aging rock star or up-and-coming rapper.

I walked in on one episode and my eyes bulged.

“Oh it’s ok, Mom, they’re just having a pole dancing competition to see who gets voted off this week. Then next week they’ll bake cakes in the nude and put them on their private parts for (aging rock star’s) birthday.”

I almost fainted.

After a time, these shows weren’t even about famous people.

“Please, Mom,” she begged, “Watch this one with me! It’s about a thirty–year-old who still lives in his parents’ basement!”

“That’s not a show; it’s a parent’s nightmare!” I replied.

“Oh, that’s not the whole show. These girls try to impress him, so that he chooses one of them as his girlfriend. And his parents help him choose!” She described it with the awe as if she were describing the secret of the Knights Templar.

I was incredulous. “These girls, are they pretty?”

“Gorgeous!”

“Do they have jobs?”

“Yeah.”

“Does HE have a job?”

“No. That’s why his parents want a girl who’ll be a good influence on him.”

I pondered on this. His parents were geniuses! They were getting paid by television executives to pawn their freeloading son off on some dim-witted beauty with a job, who would support him and finally get him out of their basement. They will finally get to enjoy their retirement and turn that space into a room where their Canasta club could meet! I was chuckling over this when I heard my daughter sigh, “I’d love to be on a reality show.”

I shuddered. I took her gently by the shoulders, looked into her eyes and said, “Promise me that you will never be on a reality show. You are smart and beautiful and do not have to humiliate yourself to become famous. For God’s sake, you’re going to be a nurse!”

She simply laughed.

“If you do,” I pleaded, “I will be forced to poke out my eyes with a rusty fork. Do you want that to happen?”

She rolled her eyes in the talented way teens do, “Oh mom, you’re so dramatic.” And she went back to watching twenty-seven drunken women cat-fighting in Jello.

* * *

      

Rob called me over one morning and whispered, “Do you think you could ask her to not leave her dirty underwear, bras and other stuff in the bathroom?”

I knew that by ‘stuff,’ he meant things too embarrassing to mention; things he’d not seen since he lived at home with his mom and had no choice.

“Sure, honey. But remember, you are living with women now.”

“Tell me about it, even the cat is female,” he sulked. I patted him on the shoulder, agreeing silently. Truth be told, my daughter was the messiest person I’d ever known. She had deftly avoided the neatness gene that ran on my side of the family and could turn any room into tornado rubble in less than an hour.

Later I asked her, “Could you please clean up after yourself in the bathroom?”

“I live here too, you know.”

“I know, dear. But it’s unsettling for a man who’s lived alone for fifteen years to find feminine products strewn around like party favors!”

“Rob should get used to it. After all, he lives with you now too.”

“Yes, but I have obsessive compulsive disorder and don’t leave rooms the way you do.”

She frowned. I knew that this was not about cleaning up, but about who was first in mommy’s heart. I hugged her and gave her a smile. “You’re my baby girl and it’s just been you and me living alone for a long time. But let’s be fair. If Rob left a mess all over the house, you’d be cranky too.”

She relented, “OK.”

The next day, after she left for school, the medicine cabinet was open, the toilet was unflushed, the toothpaste tube was oozing and her makeup bag spilled onto the vanity. But she’d picked up her dirty clothes and tossed them onto her bedroom floor and she’d slung her wet towels over the shower rod. I smiled and put her dirty clothes in the hamper. Hey, she made an effort. It was good enough for me.  

 

  

* * *

Chapter Six: House with a Teen Diva- part I

Ch 6. House with a Teen Diva

Raising a child today, especially a teenager, is an amazing experience. You have those beautiful memories that stay with you for life. Like Halloween when she was ten and dressed as a pop singer. No one knew who she was supposed to be, so the teachers made her wear a sign around her neck.

Like having the sex talk when she was twelve. She sat on the bed with a blanket over her head the entire time. I was delicate. I’d rehearsed for weeks. When I was finished, she said from underneath, “Yuck! Old people do that too?”

My daughter ran away once, to our front lawn. She was seven at the time and we’d just had an argument. She took the necessities with her − pretzel sticks, her feather collection and her Big Bird purse. She left a note that said, “I guess I have to live in the wild and be without a mom.” I joined her on the lawn and we settled our differences before dinner.

When she was fifteen and home alone one day, a firefighter knocked on our apartment door saying that a unit downstairs had had a small kitchen fire and she should leave the premises and take our important possessions. She took her iPod, her cell phone, her purse and the cat.

* * *

Like other Generation X-ers, I was a kid in the innocent seventies. We grew up with television shows like Sesame Street, Mister Rogers and The Magic Garden, where hippie girls, Carol and Paula, strummed guitars and picked jokes from the ‘giggle patch.’ Our cartoons were Woody Woodpecker and Tom and Jerry. Land of the Lost was as exciting as it got. Even in science fiction programs, like Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers, the actors had feathered hair and bell-bottoms. Video games were archaic: Pong and Asteroids. Most families didn’t own a VCR until the mid eighties. As a result, we became the most air-headed generation on the planet. We were gullible idealists.

This new generation of young people, referred to as Generation Y, astounded me. They grew up watching sharp, witty cartoons on Nickelodeon. Their television programs delved into subject matter that was far beyond their parents’ understanding at that age. These kids had access to technology we could only dream of. They learned to type at age six. They took subjects in school that didn’t exist when we were young. They matured faster and proved to be more intelligent, shrewd and insightful than we were in youth. Generation Y was simply more adept and skilled in life. How else could you explain all those creative You Tube skits?

My daughter was an amazing multi-tasker. I have personally witnessed her doing the following things at the same time:

·        work on a research paper at the computer

·        study for a math test

·        instant message seven friends

·        check her social network page

·        listen to an iPod

·        text on her cell phone

·        eat a bag of Skittles  

·        watch television

(And she still had time to ignore me when I asked her to put her dishes in the sink.)

This generation made us accustomed to folks talking to themselves in supermarket aisles. They’re not crazy; they’re using a Bluetooth! We got used to asking a question and then having to repeat it after the salesperson pulled an iPod bud from their ear. We no longer mind waiting for the checkout person to finish a text message before ringing up our purchase. We hear song lyrics that were so raw we wouldn’t even whisper them under the sheets on our wedding night.

I’ve learned that today’s teens don’t consider nicknames embarrassing. In fact, the more outrageous, the better. They are usually a description of one’s affinities.

“Who’s coming over this afternoon?” I asked my daughter.

“Let’s see…Smoky, Lushy, P-love and Taco Madness. Revs it Loud might come by later.”

“Well, there are plenty of snacks in the cupboard.”

I’ve also learned that this generation had no qualms about flirting with their elders. At a high school basketball game, I passed a group of eleventh grade boys. The leader of the bunch, who was decked out in Abercrombie & Fitch, looked me up and down and uttered a suave, “How you doin’?” I was so taken back that I blushed and dashed into the ladies’ room. When I got back to the bleachers, I complained to my daughter about the boy’s disrespectful behavior. She laughed and said, “Oh Mom. Hot parents are in! You should be flattered.”

It’s a whole new game. Daughters don’t beg their mothers anymore to let them get their ears pierced. They beg to get their belly buttons pierced. They beg for tattoos! There is a fashion precision in how teens dress, one that parents can never hope to attain. It is based on a style algorithm so complex that even biochemists cannot figure it out.  

Online lingo is a mysterious second language. Just when we applauded ourselves for knowing what LOL meant (for a year, I thought that it meant “lotsa luck”) along came more acronyms. POS “parent over shoulder,” SMH “shaking my head.” I don’t know who teaches these or where the schools are located, but I need a refresher course!

There are some positive things my daughter taught me about how things have changed. I stood before my bedroom mirror once, complaining about my rear end. She said, “You don’t have a big butt, Mom.”

Then she looked into the mirror at her slim, model-like frame and sighed, “And I have the same booty as you. We wish we had big booties.”

“We do?”

“Oh yeah. Big butts are popular. The most popular girls at school have big butts.”

“What?” I grimaced. That went against years of ingrained fitness obsessions and gaunt models I’d seen throughout my youth.

“Honey,” I explained. “In high school, we purposely didn’t buy jeans that had pockets on the seat, afraid that it made our rear ends look bigger!”

She shook her head.

“I kill myself on a Stairmaster three times a week to eliminate my booty!”

She replied somberly, “Stop doing that.” 

I stared perplexed into the mirror. As she walked out of the room, she called over her shoulder, “Butts are the new boobs.”

I was delighted. Thank goodness, someone told me!   

 ***

Chapter Five: Fun and Fitness

Ch. 5 Fun and Fitness

  

We considered ourselves a healthy, contemporary couple. We hiked, exercised, did yoga and even tried ballroom dancing. I discovered that I was not very coordinated. I tried to get Rob to take me golfing, but he refused and hid his clubs.

As a matter of fact, Rob and I first met at the gym. I was going through my Heath Ledger stage and immediately noticed Rob’s movie star face. I approached him after doing thirty minutes on the stair climber, forgetting that maybe “sweaty” wasn’t my best look. However, Rob was receptive. He also stated, “Actually people think I look more like Ben Affleck.”

Since we met one another in a gym setting, certain assumptions were made. I assumed that Rob was a non-smoker (wrong), that he always wore a seat belt (wrong again), and had no vices (wrong). He, in turn, thought that I was earthy, a non-drinker and a dog-lover. Assumptions can be deceiving, which was proven when we went on our first hike and climbed into an old stone bridge. I laughed at spray-painted words that read ‘I’m not as think as I drunk I am.’ Rob pointed and exclaimed, “Hey, I put that there in high school!”

Like most couples, we loved to cook, and loved to eat even more. After moving into our new home, we experienced a period of nesting. We’d prefer to stay home on Saturday nights and watch a DVD instead of going out. We’d prepare gourmet meals from the latest issue of Food & Wine. We’d come home on Fridays, arms laden with libations from the winery, with the simple plan of sipping it all night on the couch. These were the reasons, I told myself, for the dismal news my doctor gave me.

“Well, you seem to be in good health,” she said with a smile at my annual check up. “Blood pressure’s excellent. Although I guess you’re not happy about the weight gain.”

“What weight gain?” I asked.

“You’ve gained ten pounds since your last visit.”

I was stunned! Ten pounds? Truth be told, some of my clothes didn’t fit as well as they used to. I thought they’d shrunk. The doctor quickly added, “Oh honey, don’t worry about it. I chaperoned a high school trip to London last month and did so much walking, I was sure I’d lost weight. But instead I gained a few pounds.”

She added quietly, “It must have been the wine...”

I was dismayed. How did those malevolent ten pounds get there? I went home and lamented to anyone who would listen. 

“Ten pounds, Rob. Ten pounds! How did this happen?”

He stood there silently.

“You must’ve noticed,” I added. “You noticed and didn’t say anything?”

I threw my arms around him, “Thank you. Thank you for being the kind of man that notices and doesn’t say anything!”

I went on, “You know how this happened? We moved into the house and we got fat and happy!”

He broke out of his silence, nearly shouting, “I know! That’s why I’ve started going to the gym every day. Look at this, look at this.”

Rob lifted his shirt and pointed to his stomach. “I used to have a six-pack! Now I have a no-pack.”

“What are you complaining about? You’re stomach is practically concave.”

“Oh yeah, what’s this?” He pinched four centimeters of flesh between his fingers.

“It’s called skin. If you didn’t have it, your guts would fall out.”

I walked away. He couldn’t understand my plight. I was of a generation of women who’d given birth after gaining fifty pounds on a nine-month Sarah Lee binge. We had love handles elusively planted on our midsections, never to be removed. Due to a fashion conspiracy called low-cut jeans the terrible term ‘muffin tops’ came into being!

I even complained to my co-workers. Anyone over fifty chuckled at me, “Metabolism came to a screeching halt, eh? Yup. Been there.”

Feeling sorry for myself, I decided to go shopping. Ten minutes after I entered the store, while standing naked in front of a full-length mirror, I sent a desperate text message to my best friend, which read, “I’m in a dressing room in Old Navy and I FOUND THE EXTRA TEN POUNDS!”

Such is life. We all had our chance to be eighteen and svelte. When I saw my teenage daughter with a buttered roll in one hand and a Snickers bar in the other, I told her, “Enjoy it while you can!”

***

Chapter Four: Stay Out of My Garage

Ch. 4 Stay Out of my Garage

Our garage was as foreign to me as an Armenian marketplace. I couldn’t believe this mind-boggling place was attached to our home. It was a cornucopia of strange looking objects hanging from pegboards, perched on shelves, carefully arranged in sliding cabinets. I pondered stupidly, what is all this stuff?

God help him if Rob needed us to get something from the garage. This usually occurred while he was wedged beneath either the sink, or the car.

“Honey,” he’d ask, “please get me the pkghfhstyusfmd.”

“Huh? Where is it?”

In the garage, right next to the svgsfdrwegm.”

“What does it look like?”

“Kinda like a bnpawertum, only bigger.”

“What color is it?”

Sigh. “Silver.”

“Ok, what’s it near?”

“It’s on the work bench!”

I came back five minutes later frazzled and empty-handed. “There’s nothing silver on the work bench!”

“Which work bench did you check?”

“How many do you have?”

“Three!”

“For crying out loud,” I grumbled and stormed off to search again.

By then, Rob had extricated himself from what he was doing, “Aw, forget it! I’ll get it myself.”

Robert is a car guy. Not just a motor head, but an expert and aficionado of German engineering. He is also a framer, an electrician, a plumber, a welder and a landscaper. There is nothing the man cannot build or fix. Not that I’m complaining. His skills are greatly appreciated at our house. However, it can be intimidating, considering that I am unable to get a lid off a pickle jar! I use the heel of my shoe to bang a nail in the wall. These kinds of improvisations drive Rob crazy.  

For any required tool, for any obscure task one can imagine, Rob’s response is, “Yeah, I’ve got that.”

“Honey, I need something to fasten the garland of flowers around our lamppost.”

“You need zip ties.”

“Oh. Do we have any?”

“Yeah, I’ve got those.”

“What if they don’t match the garland?”

“I’ve got them in every color.” Darned if he didn’t.

Since I had no creative control over the garage, to me it was just a big dumping ground for whatever didn’t fit inside the house. I tossed framed pictures, old boots, unused lamps and a slew of ‘things we would sell at a yard sale.’ This also drove him crazy. You’d frequently find Rob storing, moving, lifting, shifting or rearranging objects into mysterious categories, so that each time we entered the garage, it looked different than the time before. There was no hope of ever finding anything. I think it was a ploy so that we’d have to ask him and then he’d know we were in there.

“Where’s the Swiffer sweeper?” I asked. “I just put it in the garage two days ago.”

He frowned, “I moved it. Do you have to put the mops in there?”

“Where else would we put them?”

He motioned inside the house.

“In the house? I’ve been putting cleaning supplies in the garage for months.”

“Yeah, I know,” he crossed his arms and frowned again.

“Let me guess. When your buddies come over, it’s not manly to have mops in the corner of the garage?”

“Darn straight!” he admitted.

“Then hide them!”

“I already did.”

* * *