Confession: What's the stupidest stunt you pulled as a teenager?
The first thing I did was laugh when I read this story of a 19-year old woman who cracked open a can of beer while sitting in a police car. Not only was it an inane thing to do, she was simply getting a ride home from an officer after the friend she was riding with was arrested for a DUI. Even worse, the beer was a Steell Reserve malt liquor. In a can.
The second thing I did was email the link to my brother with the message, "You pulled a lot of stupid crap as teenager, but at least you never did this."
He's a father now to a brand-new baby boy and when I visited him recently with my own son, my brother and I had a long conversation about our opinions about talking to and dealing with our children's seemingly inevitable dalliances with drugs, sex, general rowdiness, and things we can't even (or won't even) imagine at this point in their lives.
We also laughed about some of the dumb stunts we pulled, times we got in trouble, things we just barely escaped our parents finding out we did. We weren't bad kids. But we certainly expressed our fair share of teenage rebellion. Now, all these years later and with young lives to shape and support and watch like hawks and stay up past curfew waiting for, I wonder how we will react if our boys do some of the dumb stuff we did.
I don't have the answers yet. There may be nothing to worry about and there could be crazy malt-liquor-can-cracking moments I never dreamed of in these kiddos' futures (oh God, fingers crossed that neither of them acquires a police car-penetrating taste for Steel Reserve).
We will just have to thank the gods that we made it through those angst-ridden, pranking, authority-pushing years alive and relatively unscathed and wait to see what the future (and these now-innocent) boys bring.
While we do, why not take the opportunity to put out there some of our own experiences?
What is the stupidest stunt you pulled as a teen? How would you handle that now if you were the parent?
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[photo credit: Google Images]
