Thursday, May 28, 2009

12 1/2

Okay, I give. Being the mother of a kid who’s almost not a kid any more is starting to . . . well, let’s just say it’s starting. First came the Great Oral Sex Talk (TM), and then came a sleep over with a friend the night before The Boy and said friend went to see a movie with another kid. And no parent. And GIRLS. (This was a totally harmless and upstanding visit to a multiplex to see the Wolverine movie. The mother who drove them all in her van stayed and watched Angels & Demons. Nothing to worry about, aside from, you know: girls.)

Most of The Boy’s friends have their own phones now, so you can probably imagine what the sleep over was like. Remember how, when we were kids, you went to a sleep over with your girl friends and one or two of the girls (never me, because I was too shy and puritanical [my, how that changed]) spent as much time as possible calling different boys and asking them who they liked? Think of how that scenario changes when each kid has his or her own phone. The Boy and his friend thought it was funny at first, but ended up shutting of their phones after a while, so they could end the deluge of “Who do you likes,” and get down to the serious business of playing Lego Star Wars on the Wii.

So, haha. Cute and all. But then it seems that The Boy and his friend got a little too big (stupid, mean, bitchy) for their britches. They wrote two stories about two boys in their class, and neither story was flattering. How do I know they wrote these stories? The idiots saved them to my laptop’s hard drive. Imagine my surprise when I opened up Word and saw a doc called “N Sucks.” I only hesitated a moment before reading it and the other file. And then I checked my browser history to see whether the two files had been e-mailed. Sigh. They had.

In truth, both stories were unkind, but pretty tame aside from one where a character called another a “stupid homo.” This more than anything is what compelled me to have a serious discussion with The Boy, because while I know my kid isn’t perfect, I like to think he’s got a bit of honor in him (I know it’s an antiquated word, but I refuse to believe it’s an antiquated notion). And kids who care about honor don’t make fun of other kids, and they CERTAINLY don’t let other kids use homo as an insult. Especially if their dads are gay. Mmm-kay? I knew The Boy himself didn’t write that little gem. In fact, I’m pretty familiar with The Boy’s writing style and vocabulary and know that he didn’t contribute much at all (I know, for example, that he had a character turn into a Muppet [he’s finishing up an art project that mirrors Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party, using Jim Henson as his guest of honor] and then get defenestrated [we’ve been cracking defenestration jokes for weeks—it’s a funny word]).

What bothers me, though, is that The Boy went along. And I’ve seen him cave to this other kid’s whims since they were pretty small. Time for a talk.

I asked The Boy what he could tell me about some stories he and A (the other kid—in fact the very kid whose dad is an ass and who was trying to force the big stupid house on his wife) had written. Immediately, The Boy’s face fell. He said, “We wrote some stories that were stupid and mean, and we shouldn’t have done it.” I asked what he was thinking, and he said he didn’t really know, but that it was late and they were tired and being stupid. And then he said, “I feel especially bad about the story about R, because I don’t even know him!”

I was glad about two things: He seemed to honestly feel bad (he was near tears), and he didn’t try to sell out A, who I know was the driving force here. But I still had to get to the little matter of his allowing A to use the word homo as an insult—-in The Boy’s presence, and in our home. I told him he has to speak up about stuff like that. We talked about how to speak up, and how hard it is. And we talked about the fact that I had cool, funny friends who could be mean, and who were very hard to stand up to.

And then I told him that I’ll give him one more chance, but if I see him not being able to stand up to A, they won’t be allowed to hang out together outside of school.

It was a long, good talk. And I hope it made some kind of difference. I made The Boy e-mail the two girls he and A had sent the stories to. He told them both he’d had second thoughts, that he knew the stories were mean and stupid, and that he hoped they’d both delete them and forget about them.

And I called A’s mom and filled her in. She was really upset, but of course A’s dad said she was overreacting, that boy’s will be boys, and that e-mailing those stories was no big deal at all. Because A’s dad is an asshole. And despite his mother’s best efforts, A is heading right down the same path.

I just hope I don’t have to say the same for The Boy.

Thursday, May 14, 2009

"Let's Have Some Fun, This Beat is Sick. I Wanna Take a Ride on Your Disco Stick."

So. SO. I am a dork and a geek, and am one of those adults for whom much of popular culture--especially where music is concerned--disappeared once parenthood came along. The Boy was born at the tail end of 1996, and pretty much the last "new" band I remember really liking was Ben Folds Five.

A few things permeated my oblivion: Eminem and his Slim Shady would often stick in my head. I saw Outkast on SNL and fell in love with them. I have a bit of a thing for the Black Eyed Peas. For the most part, though, I've spent the last twelve-plus years bringing up The Boy on a steady diet of public radio and the music I loved from birth to about age 26, like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, Johnny Cash and Buffalo Springfield, Barenaked Ladies and Counting Crows, Nirvana and Hole. He had a brief foray into bands like AC/DC when he played guitar, but for the most part he just coasted along with whatever I offered, expressing dislike for anything too slow or lovey, but that's about it.

The time has come, though, for The Boy to want to listen to the songs the other kids are listening to, so we've been watching some videos on YouTube and listening to the pop music station in the car sometimes . . . which means that for the first time in my life . . . I am looking at pop music from The Other Side--The Grown-up Side. I've found the Peas, of course, whose Boom Boom Pow song pleases and amuses me ("I'm so 3008; your so 2000 and late,"), Britney's Circus, which is fine, and Lady Gaga. That's her lyric from the title up there, from her song Love Game. Here's the link to the video, if you care to have a look. (I really dig her silver nail polish, but am fully aware of the fact that I am much, much too old for it.)

Anyway . . . yeah. Things are pretty sexed up, aren't they? I laughed out loud the first time I heard Lady Gaga mention her interest in riding some fella's disco stick, and I asked The Boy whether he had any thoughts as to what said line might be referring to. He said, "I think she means penis," and I said, "I think you're right." We talked a little bit about how it seems that sex is pretty much inescapable in pop music and popular culture in general, and how that just seems insane to him, even if he likes the way the songs sound. And then, THEN . . . we heard Right Round, the Flo Rida song that I GUESS is a cover of the Dead or Alive song from the 80s. Do you know this song? Unabashedly about oral sex? Call me crazy, but I wanted to make sure The Boy would know what he was saying if he found himself walking along, singing, "You spin my head round, baby, right round, when you go down, when you go down down." Here's a transcript of that bit of the conversation:

Me: You know this song is about oral sex, right?
The Boy: "What?!?
M: Going down is a euphemism for oral sex.
TB: What's oral sex?
M: [Without even a pause, as if I'm totally cool with what I'm about to say to
MY PRECIOUS BABY BOY.] When you use your mouth to stimulate someone's
genitals during sex.
TB: [Long pause.] OH MY GOD, YUCK!!!
M: Yeah, I thought it was gross too, when I first heard about it, but it turns
out that it's actually a nice thing when you're ready for it.
TB: [Total disbelief; turns up volume on music, ending discussion.]

And so ends a tender parental interlude, wherein I try to play it cool while wildly following my gut and hoping I'm doing the right thing. I mean, sex is a good thing. Knowledge is power. Right? What's weird is that I had no problem at all discussing "the birds and the bees" with The Boy; why should oral sex be any different? What's my problem?