Unwired and Coming Un-hinged:World's Longest Post about Porn

A couple events of the past few days have made me get super depressed about the future. The problem? The utter portability of porn…and problems.

I was talking to a friend who recently had a 12th birthday sleepover for her son. During the night the boys used their I-phones and Droids and I-pod Touches to look at porn on You-Tube and other sites. The parents had made sure the movies they had provided were appropriate, and that the snacks were good; what they hadn’t realized was that after lights-out a Lord of the Flies mentality would reign, fueled by puberty, smuggled-in Energy Drinks, and wireless electronics.

Then this morning when I dragged myself out of bed after the 4th of July festivities, I went up to my kids’ rooms. In one room Molly and her cousin were watching a movie on a PSP, and in the next room Jake and his cousin were watching You-tube clips on an I-Pod Touch. Our cousins had these gadgets with them for summer air travel, in the same way we take a portable DVD player in the car on road trips.

Nothing they were watching was objectionable (Herbie the Love Bug and funny You-tube Videos) but it made me think…CRAP! On a typical summer morning they would have had to come downstairs and ask, “Can we watch TV?” in the family room. I know it should be "May we watch TV?" but I'm keeping it real here. We would have made the decision. We would have placed limits on what and for how long. But here we were, a few yards away from them, and we didn’t have a clue what they were doing.

When I was growing up, a friend’s older brother might have had a Playboy magazine that got passed around the neighborhood a couple of times. Our TVs didn’t have cable, and although one or two neighborhood dads might have had a few racy VHS tapes, that was just a gross fact we knew, but we didn’t dare watch them. When phone sex lines started when we in 8th or 9th grade, I am sure Betsy Arnold’s parents got wind of what was going on pretty quickly when the whopping phone bill came in after we got a little crazy at our “Thriller-Video-Watching Party.” But beyond that, there wasn’t much opportunity for accessing porn. It just seemed too risky.

Our phones were attached to the wall, right there in the kitchen. I hated this, but it had many advantages. First of all, we had to share phone use with the entire family. This cut down on how long calls could be. Also, the family knew if a boy had good phone manners, and they felt free to throw out opinions on who was calling. Kind of like a Greek Chorus, my older brother could say to me, “Hey, Loser, why is so and so calling YOU if he’s dating that pretty red-headed girl?” Word got around the house, and usually around school, of who was calling whom.

Knowing they had to go through the parental or sibling gateway, callers might think twice about calling, and let’s just say sexy talk was an impossibility when the phone was located right next to the tuna noodle casserole.

Until I wised up and invested in a 100-foot long phone cord so I could sneak the phone up to my attic bedroom, I was at the mercy of my home’s limited phone jacks. Even at the time, as I stayed up until 3 in the morning talking to a boyfriend who was away at college, I could see the wisdom in my parents wanting to monitor what I was doing, because I found myself being pulled in too deeply in a relationship I wasn’t ready for. But I was the third child, and my parents were tired. I also knew I was playing with fire another time, when as a 16 year old, I was getting calls from a 26-year-old man…. I can only imagine if it was today and he was a 26-year-old man with a web cam. Ick.

As a parent, I know I can’t shelter my kids from everything, but I always thought I’d go down swinging. We watched nothing but PBS until the oldest child was 9; no cable tv until just a few years ago. Our aces in the hole were the proclamations that we would NEVER have a TV or computer in the kids’ bedrooms. Puh-leaze. If we had known 11 years ago how much things would change, and how little impact that rule would have, I would have seen the naiveté of this thinking.

Computers and TV’s in the bedrooms? New technology has taken the place of these monoliths. As we all know, wireless technology means we carry our “computers and tv’s” in our pockets, backpacks, and into our bedrooms, bathrooms, and cars.

Unplugging from the walls, however, unplugs our actions from the watchful eye of a family. A teenage girl can receive thousands of threatening texts from a boyfriend, yet stay completely under her family’s radar. There is no one picking up the phone in the kitchen and taking messages on a notepad. Thousands of phone calls on a landline would never go unnoticed. While my kids won't have TV's or computers in their bedrooms, they will have cell phones that can do goodness knows what.

And then there is sexting, when boys and girls can “say” whatever they want, when they would never be emboldened to do so face to face, or even on a family’s phone.

While electronics will help us monitor where our kids are (something our parents couldn’t do), it seems to me that they will make it very difficult to monitor what our kids see and do.

For those of you with younger children, you may be thinking this will not be a problem for your kids. Your kids will be different. It is hard to imagine, when using cool new technology to access Thomas and Friends, Go Diego Go and funny cat videos, how it can all go so terribly wrong, so fast.

But let me say that just as technology seems to be changing at lightning speed, our children are growing fast. I feel like I blinked and landed in the world of PG-13 movies and cell phones. Those same little kids whose heads are bent over a DS right now, will most likely have the latest gadget in hand in the next 5 years.

I tell myself my kids are obedient, and they understand limits. Right now my daughter has zero interest in electronics, and my son asks before he goes to any website. My own kids do not yet have cell phones, and have no portable electronic devices. But I know that will change.

And I was young once. When I was a pre-teen and early teen I had the sex-drive of a piece of corrugated cardboard. But would I have looked at porn if I’d been given the chance? Sure. Absolutely. You can bet on it.

And there’s the real problem. The images I would have seen would have been seared into my memory. I would have carried them with me into my dating relationships and into my marriage. And what I would have seen would have been NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING compared to what our kids could see today.

And the guilt. You already know I feel guilt about everything. The guilt I would have carried about what I saw would have been hard on me mentally and spiritually and driven a wedge between my parents and me as I had to keep secrets, even more than I was already keeping.

So I don’t know where I’m going with this except to say that we only have one family. And parenting gets tiring, exhausting, really. I guess I’m just reminding myself that just because inventions are the "next cool thing" with amazing capabilities and functions, they can come with a cost.

Playing Catch-up

Since our last chat, I've been up to, well, about 5 feet, 5 1/2 inches. Yeah, if my dear colleague answers with his height one more time when I ask him what he's been up to, I'll... I'll... I just don't know what I'll do.

Here's a random recap of what I really have been up to. After reading it, you may wish I'd just stuck with my vital statistics:

1. Reading spiritual memoirs. I'm in LOVE with authors Don Miller and Anne Lamott. I know I'm about a zillion years late falling in love with these two, of Blue Like Jazz and Traveling Mercies, fame, but I just gobbled up Miller's new book:

and an older one by Anne Lamott:

Love, love, love the way they write and the way they make me think about my life and my story. They remind me of one of my favorite bloggers, Glennon.

2. Homeschooling and negotiating. Okay, not really. My poor daughter has only been out of school 3 days and we've already lost her summer math packet. We also haven't decided where to send her to school next year. So much for stability.

We are, however, reading a book about Women's Suffrage from the Dear America historical book series. She's loving it and I guess has taken some lessons to heart, because after a huge blow-up with her dad last night (over stuffed zucchini), she marched down the stairs carrying her "picket" as they say in the book.

Fortunately, I intercepted her and used my crack negotiating skills to talk her back up to her bedroom banishment. Somehow a hate note on the very same white board he took her to buy at Michael's earlier that day didn't seem like it would further her case for justice.

3. Buying ill-filling pants at the thrift store. Yep, in an effort to save money, I've made the brilliant move of buying used pants. Without a dressing room. The question is, is it really a bargain when I suddenly look like I have BIFF--"butt in front?"

4. Watching movies! Grand Torino was awesome! Acting? Meh. Story? Stellar. Tom and I discovered after an electrical storm that for some reason we now have Cinemax and Showtime. I hope to watch a few more movies before it goes back wherever it came from.

5. Avoiding my bathing suit. Yep, we canceled our pool membership this summer to save a little money. Happily, that means no bathing suit for me. Sadly, it means no fun for the kids, who have been hanging out in our driveway wearing suits and goggles hoping neighbors with a pool with have pity on them.

6. Sending kids to 9 hour a day church camp without sun or insect protection. Crap. I hope to remedy this tomorrow. Tick check will be tonight at 9.

7. Watching TV! The four of us are hooked on "America's Got Talent." An early contestant who billed himself as a "Genital Daredevil" and put his privates in a bucket with a firecracker really grabbed our attention AND expanded our vocabulary. It was a real teachable moment. The other acts have either horrified or inspired us, too.

8. Admiring my hair. To the average person, my hair is not doing anything that special. But after my hairdresser gave me a straightening treatment, I look less like this:

and more like, well, a normal person.


A normal person who just smelled something icky, but still.

So I guess that's about it in my little kingdom-- apart from doing laundry, going to work and trying to discover my hidden talent-- definitely not genital daredevil-dom--What about you?

Do I dare ask?

What have YOU been up to?

Summer Showers?

So if someone pees her pants just a little bit, 3 times in one week, does that constitute a problem?

Just wondering.

Inconvenience or Act of God?

The cleaning lady came yesterday (yay!) and now for some reason our oven door is locked, from the inside. No amount of tugging will open it.

Believe me, I am not complaining. To summer and Taco Bell!

Leave a Teachable Moment Alone

Jake had been complaining that he'd heard a lot of cussing from boys his age lately.

He said, "I'm afraid I'm going to begin thinking all those words are just normal parts of conversation."

Seizing on the teachable moment, I said, "Well, this is a good life lesson for you. The same thing will happen when you are a teenager with smoking and sex, but you need to be different."

"What? Are you saying teenagers have sex with their girlfriends?!?"

Uh...

Crud.

Monday Musings

I decided I was well overdue for a little blogging. So I turned on my computer and the screen was completely black. Lifeless. I tried to fix it by pushing and pulling on all sorts of plugs but that yielded no results and just seemed so…tiring...so I gave up.

I tried to jot down some blog ideas on a piece of paper for later and all I could find at my desk was a stubby green colored pencil which was about as much fun to write with as a cheese stick.

And then I started wondering why, if there are probably 500 pens and pencils in this house, the only ones ever on or around my desk are highlighters, crappy colored pencils, or pencils that look normal, but basically have an outrageously long point with half wood, half lead. I mean, who wants to have to swivel her pencil around to find the lead, or more importantly, to avoid trying to scratch something out with a sharpened, squeaky piece of wood? Obviously not me. Is a little flowing ink too much to ask for?

I decided that while these thoughts were scintillating, instead of blogging today, perhaps I was really meant to pay more attention to my children.

But then I started talking to my 55 lb 11 year old (!) and he told me he wanted to start eating healthy foods so he wouldn’t “get fat.” No more cookies, no more ice cream, no more snacks. This totally stressed me out and made me project that in a year or so we would have enough new traumatic material to be the subject of yet another After School Special, so I decided to turn my attention to the other child.

She was trying to kill time before her soccer tryout, in which 65 girls were vying for 44 slots. And I mood-swung (?) between feeling foolish for letting an 8 year old (!) get all wrapped up in this travel soccer thing, and hoping that at least 21 of the other girls would come down with a little something before 6 pm. And then I spent a little time wondering if I'd done that math right on that.

Then I did what anyone would do-- started thinking about my hair, which I had chemically straightened on Friday! I spent the weekend swinging and flipping my very flat, silky, lustrous mane around (in June, in the South!)

Sure, it smelled like an Ogilvie Home Perm, but those 3 days were totally worth it! Now I've washed it and look pretty much like my old self again.

I contemplated putting a picture of my fancy hair on here, but in the ones Molly took my nose is so incredibly long and pointy I was afraid it might protrude through your computer screen and alarm you as it does me most mornings when I look in the mirror. So I decided to post a pic of my adorable daughter instead. You know, the one who said, "The pictures don't make your nose look big, Mom. It's always been big."

Sooooo, not sure where I’m going with this, but am thinking perhaps I was not meant to blog, or parent, or preen or post photos at all today.

Perhaps this Monday is a day best spent with a girl enjoying other people's blogs, a cold Mike's Hard Lemonade in her hand.

xo

Style Key West

Guess what? I'm guest posting over at Style Key West today! The topic? Color and decorating, with a little Sue Sylvester thrown in for fun. Hope to see you there.