You Were Wrong Mom

When I was about 14, I had a “boyfriend” - as in a classmate asked me to “go steady” with him. My family was living smack in the middle of Utah at the time, which means we were surrounded by a 99% Mormon population. Something you may not know about Mormons is that in general they are not allowed to date until they are 16 years old. We attended a middle school where dances consisted of the boys trying to act cool against one wall and the girls giggling against the other wall. There was not exactly a lot of interaction. Our “relationship” consisted of talking on the phone in the evenings and being too embarrassed around each other to say more than “Hi” at school. We didn't even get close to holding hands. By the way, his best friend had a similar relationship with my best friend.

A real breakthrough came right before his 14th birthday. We had probably been “together” for a month or less. He wanted my best friend and his to go with us to see a movie in the little local theater, where everyone in town went. His mom was even going to go and sit behind us. My best friend’s mom said she could go if I could (probably because she knew that my parents were utlra religious). My mom said, “No, that it was a date.” I couldn’t believe it, especially with his mom going! I reasoned, begged, pleaded and did just about everything to convince my mom to let me go. A word of advice...never go up against a red headed Irish mom, it is just a waste of time and energy. She had heard some statistic that girls have s*e*x exactly two years after their first date. She was not going to budge. As you can guess, nobody got to go. Probably a week or two later, we broke up for whatever childish reason. We were still friends though, which is basically what we were when we were “going together.”

Recently, through the power of internet networking, we found each other and have chatted a little. It turns out that he is gay, which incidentally makes me like him more (as a person of course). I can only imagine how difficult it was growing up in the middle of Utah. He is not living there anymore. He has even travelled a lot and lives an interesting life. Now, I really wish we would have been better friends. I called my mom up to let her know that in the end I was right. She didn’t have to worry about anything happening between us. Of course, she is a much more laid back person twenty + years later. She just laughed. She also denies knowing that his mom was going to go. I am sure I stressed that point in my pleading. I called one of my brothers who was about 7 at the time just to make sure & he remembered that detail.

Moral of the story - Sometimes the teenager is right….but don’t quote me on that in about 12 years, when I am battling my kids.