Really it does.
"Just get your rabies shots each time," I tell my daughter.
"Mama!" she screams. "That is SO rude."
When love is not physical, can you stay in love? If he thinks you're edible, does it mean he's honestly in love with you? "It means he's in lust," I growl. "Beware of that kind of dog."
"What's a hickey, mom?"
Perhaps we should ban the National Library Board. It lends out the most annoying teen books. But I grab the silver lining and a gap to preach.
"That's to be given only by the one who swears to me that he will marry you. You can't trust just anyone with your neck."
"Mom, you sound so old," she sighs.
I miss those times when I bought teething toys and stayed up all night. Instead we "simply have" to go online to find the technical description of a hickey. It's an O-shaped welt imprinted on your neck and worn with pride, rather like the territorial spraying of canines. And a nibble is so not a hickey.
There's more online, but my advice is, don't go there.
Our girls’ talk of love, or whatever it is that happens between barely hairy boys and sweet pre-teen girls, veers doggedly to canines. What's with boys and doggies, I wonder. When they're little, they're made of
Snips and snails
And puppy dogs' tails
A bit older, and they bite, territorialize and let their tongues hang out around any innocent girl in the vicinity.
I do have a son too so I'm not biased against his gender. He’s still a child anyways. I think.
Why do I pretend that love is not all it's hiked up to be, when I know it is? I should, for someone who wrote the longest love letters ever, burnt and bled - literally - for love, walked through fire(aka her endogamous community) and walked out of that community. And still raises hell and fights for her share of romance every inch of her married life.
Horrifically, I look at love now with a mom’s prejudiced eye, so I decide to let my 13-year old splash some innocence here.
THE TEEN TALKS
Falling in love is a wonderful feeling. When you love someone you feel on top of the world.
Here my mother interrupts, "You should always be on top of the world. You love me, don't you?"
"I'm not IN love with you, Mom," I sigh. Writing this with her was not such a good idea after all!
Love is a brat, people say. When you fall in love you forget everything else that's happening around you and concentrate on the one you love. You see, it's hard work being in love. You have to be able to juggle school, homework, tests, parental lectures and to add on to that, love.
I imagine that if I fell in love, I would think of him, him and only him. I would seem more distracted than usual and my evenings after school would be taken up thinking of us. If I did get a call, I would just listen and wish we were together right then.
I read somewhere that 'Love is just a chapter in a boy's life, but in a girl's life it's the whole book.' Girls take love much more seriously than guys. At least that's what I think.
MAMA HAS THE LAST WORD
I love my teenaged brat. I really do.
