Teenagers nowadays think nothing of giving each other hugs to greet each other. It is how we raised them. We raised them to show affection, we raised them to love. We also raised them to respect. We raised them to recognize the boundaries of what is right, what is wrong and what is acceptable behavior and what is not.

The other day when I picked her up from school, she was livid. She was outraged that on two separate occasions that day, two boys she considered as friends hugged her as is their usual way greeting each other. The first incident happened between classes. Her friend hugged her but in addition nuzzled her neck and kissed her neck. She said she was disgusted but was too shocked to say anything at the time. A little while later as she was going in to the classroom, another boy did the same thing to her. Whether the two contrived to do this to her or not, she is not sure. She is sure of how it made her feel. It made her feel uncomfortable and it made her feel dirty. She ran into the shower as soon as she got home to wash it all off. The thing is, you can not simply wash off the feeling of having been violated leaves behind.

You can’t simply chuck it to teenage hormones and that boys will be boys. Was she partly responsible for having been subjected to this? Should she consider changing the way she relates to her friends and should she be the one compelled to change classes so she does not have to deal with them again? The answer is a resounding NO.
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A winter storm came through the Carolinas which started on Friday night. Snow fell through Saturday and now we are buried in snow! How exciting is that, eh? Well, when I say buried, take that with a lot of grains of salt especially if you live where snow is a regular occurrence. Don’t forget that we live in the South where any snow is a big event. So when we get almost a foot of snow, we consider that being ‘buried’.

We’ve been eagerly anticipating this snow since Wednesday when they started spraying the streets with the nasty anti-ice concoction. I was still at work around six o’clock on Friday evening when the snow started falling. When I saw the snow fall through my office window, you’d think a parade was going by! I was almost jumping up and down with glee and so was my office mate who eagerly came to the window with me. I hurriedly wrapped things up at work and headed home. As I was driving, the snow kept falling at a brisk pace. It was so pretty I had to take a video. I just love the look of snow coming at me and swirling around the car. It was beautiful! And I just found the coincidence so amusing that while I was enjoying the snow fall, the song ‘It never rains in California’ started playing on the radio! I just had to take a video. lol!
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My girls are doing so much better than I was at their age, so I guess they’re not doing too badly and I’m not such a slacker mom after all. I was, however, a slacker student and I admit it.

We had a good laugh about my slackness today during dinner. My daughter Jade was debating whether to take another year of AP calculus and was wondering whether she would have to take two separate AP tests for each section… I guess her Calculus class is divided into AB section the first semester and CD section for the second semester… or something like that. I said, “Why are you asking me? I don’t know! You should ask your teacher. I didn’t even take calculus until I was already in college.” To which, she answered, “I was only thinking out loud, mom”. Yeah, well of course she was! I knew she wasn’t expecting a serious answer from me! What was I thinking!
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I found out recently that sometimes, you can have information overload! lol My daughter has me as friend on facebook and one time it just so happened that one of her updates that she had tagged me on generated a long and extended conversation among her friends. Some of which were not politically correct, some were rude, and some were mean. It bothered me a bit, how they talked to each other, not to mention that I received over 70 email notifications from this particular discussion. However, no one was getting offended and they seem to be having fun with it. I supposed it is just how they communicate with each other.

Instead of adding my comment to the fray, I took my daughter aside and talked to her about the language and tone of the conversation she was having with her friends. She admitted some of the comments had gotten out of hand and she took it upon herself to get her friends to tone it down.

Later, while talking about all the ‘discussions’ generated by that thread, she off-handedly thanked me for not commenting. I told her I had considered it… I really was going to say something to them about cleaning up their language and not be so rude to each other. My daughter said, “Thank you!! for not saying anything. That would have been so embarassing!” LOL! I guess if I was a teenager I would be embarassed too.

I found out about this funny site where teens can get revenge on their Facebook intruding parents by posting the offending comment from their ‘parentals’, as we are called.

So, you finally caved. You’ve accepted a friend request from your Mom, Dad, crazy Aunt Ida, and your college roommate’s newly divorced mother. Well here’s your chance to get back at them for taking away your public privacy.

The site is called My Parents Joined Facebook and the image below is an example of the kind of posts on there.

Like I said, I am friends with my daughters on Facebook but I try not to abuse the privillege. Some of their friends have even friended me and I’ve friended them back but I am very conservative with my interactions with them. I try to limit myself to simply clicking the ‘like’ button when the have something nice. NEVER wall-to-wall communiques and definitely no smart aleck comments no matter how funny I think it would be.

If you’re on the fence about having your kids or your family as Facebook friends, read more about this issue here in this amusing article, Parents’ Facebook Infiltration.