This week I've been visiting with some dear friends in Kalamazoo while I get some much needed stuff done (shush up, I'm very busy and important). It's important I remain vague with details because I want to seem more intriguing and mysterious to you. Just know that all day today, and for several days to follow, I'm all over the place being busy. And important. And I'm putting on real pants several days in a row.
SHOCK AND AWE.
While I'm here I've been staying with the family I used to live with. They're fun and crazy, just like myself, which makes us a great fit. They have three daughters who are all old enough to carry on a decent conversation but just young enough that they're not obscenely boring and self centered yet. You know how that happens for chicks right around sixteen. It's all about the right pants and cell phones then. Right now, they're still cute and naive. Also, much like myself.
I offered to take them out last night for dinner and a movie for some serious girl gossip. I mean, it had been months since I had heard about the 10 year old's dramatic relationship with Justin who's also in her class at school. And I won't even go into how much of a YOU-KNOW-WHAT this girl in Madison's ELA class is with her low cut shirts and flirtacious behavior. If you spent one evening with these kids you would think that they were all for lynching to come back in style, but only if it applied to the threatening and cute girls in their schools who are after the same men they also are.
I'm sorry, did I say men? I meant pre-pubescent boys with boogers and dirty hands. However, when you're 10 1/2, you can't exactly be picky. Unless you go to the same school Justin Bieber does.
So we go to Chili's where they completely ignore their mother's pleas before we left the house of "can you please just get something mildly healthy so you don't die tomorrow on the soccer field?" and ate more chips and salsa than their little bodies could handle. They then proceeded to say the most bizarre shit that I have ever heard come out of their mouths.
It was then that I realized the only naive one was me. These were not the same girls that I had left! They had BECOME the kids obsessed with cell phones and the correct pants. Even the little one was all "You should have SEEN what she was wearing Ashley...I wouldn't be caught dead in it. Can I have another root beer?" while my gaping jaw just hit the table, trying to keep up with the flow of conversation.
They had been corrupted by middle school. My precious, sweet girls who two months ago didn't know what half of the things in the world really were when they were mentioned on TV.
Here's an example of what I mean. The hostess asked us how many and our smoking preference when we first came in and, of course, I said non-smoking please. The ten year old turns to me and puts her hands on her hips, big sarcastic smirk on her face as she says to me "Yeah, Ash, didn't you know? I started smoking Pot!"
FIRST OF ALL: WHAT? How do you even know what Pot is? And secondly, THAT'S NOT WHAT SHE MEANT WHEN SHE ASKED SMOKING OR NON. Please don't ever assume you can pull out a blunt at your local Applebee's because, trust me, you can't. Settle for the brownie sundae and wait until you get home.
After the longest dinner I've probably ever been through and a book store (lots of vampire/teen fiction...like, a lot more than I'd ever be willing to dig my way through and I am ALL ABOUT the teen fiction. And sex! Holy cow are teens in books having a lot of sex. A lot more than I am, anyway) we finally make it to How To Train Your Dragon where the 8 year old gets motion sickness from the 3-D and we end up spending the majority of the movie in the aisle way just outside our theater with a glass of water, not enjoying my lemon heads at all.
It was a rough evening all together. I couldn't really even explain to their parents when we came back just what I had endured, but tried to explain as politely as I could that, TRUST ME, how much broccoli I got them to eat with their dinner isn't the problem here. Not. At. All.
Becoming a teenager is treacherous. For everyone.
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