Trying to Find My Rope-A-Dope

Kurt Vonnegut once said, "True terror is waking up one morning to discover that your high school class is running the country."  I had this quote on my fridge for about ten years, because, I'm a Gen-Xer.

 Let's face it, I don't do delayed gratification.  Thanks to Sesame Street, the Electric Company, and Schoolhouse Rock, I'm a visual learner. Lots of us come from "broken" homes. We were labeled materialistic, disengaged, and slackers.  We survived the Cold War, Ronald Reagan, the Challenger Disaster, the AIDS terror, Black Monday, and Chernobyl.  We watched the Berlin Wall come crashing down.  We watched "Red Dawn" then had to cower under our desks on Monday because of the Red Scare.

But really, I think we're the change generation.  We're more accepting of social diversity...races, religions, sexual orientation.  We hold the highest education levels when comparing age groups.  Compared with other generations, we have the highest volunteer rates.  We strive for long-term institutional changes, rather than the revolution our parents' generation tried to achieve. We're labeled the MTV generation that was more interested in philosophizing than settling for a white picket fence, yet study after study shows us as highly family oriented.  We change jobs more than our parents rearranged the furniture.

I look back, and I'm really not that worried about my generation running the country.  In fact, I'm convinced we'd be better, because there is a part of us that has never, and will never, put down our boots and say, "To hell with it.  If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."  We're good movers and shakers; we organize.  We believe in a better world.

I'm not worried about my generation, because, see, back in my day (yeah, I'm old enough I can say that now), you didn't really get to be a slacker and sing "I'm a loser baby," like Beck did, unless you were also successful.  It was only cool to say you never cracked a book if you still got straight-As.  It was only cool to get drunk in a hot tub the night before the state scholastic competition if you could wake up with your head feeling like it was the size of Manhattan (why did you have to say "Manhattan" *gag*) and your mouth tasting like a dumpster smells, have a latte, and still kick some ass.  It was only cool to skip two weeks of Organic Chemistry in college to hang out in your dorm room with a towel under the door listening to Ravi Shankar if you could show up for the test and still blow the curve.  We made nerds cool.

I'm now the mother of a 16-year old.  THIS I find terrifying.  Terror is waking up to Justin Beiber wailing down the hall and coming face to face with his mug every time you are knocking on the door to tell her to turn it down.  I had Pearl Jam, The Lovemongers, and The Screaming Trees for God's sake.  My dad would sit on the stairs outside my bedroom, tell me to turn it up, and ask, over and over "WHO is this again?" 

I'll tell you what terrifying is.  Terrifying is when the smartest kid in class shows up to pick up your daughter for a date, and he doesn't understand WHERE, exactly, a belt goes.  Just in case a young whippersnapper is reading this, it goes ABOVE your ass, not below.

Terrifying is standing in line at Taco Bell at midnight, sober as a judge, and realizing the deepest level of philosophy coming out of the mouths of the stoned younger generation amounts to "OMG!! LIKE, SRZLY?!" and "FOR REALZ!"  WTF ever happened to debating the fascist standardization of the size of the lettuce shavings on my Chalupa?  Does no one pay attention anymore?

And, really, what the hell is up with me having to stand in line at Starbucks for 30 minutes, behind some teeny bopper who has 3,000 contacts in her iPhone, "because it pulled all her facebook contacts" (like SRZLY, I KNOW you don't actually KNOW all those people, I monitor my kid's facebook, twitter, and whatever those 20 other sites are that add 5 hours to my day) and she can't find Brittany in all of them to ask if she wants chocolate sprinkles or rainbow sprinkles on her skinny cocoa?  For the love of all that is sacred and holy, the line is 15 minutes long.  You send 16,000 texts a month.  Type in her ever loving name, or better yet, have that shit figured out before you walk in.  LIFE SKILLS, PEOPLE! We old bastards need our coffee to fight tyranny (AKA our parents who still know EVERYTHING *eye roll*) and still find the energy to deal with the Beibs and that Swift girl that can't get her shit together enough to have a normal break-up. Which reminds me, what the hell happened to that Starbucks mermaid's breasts?  Was there a pink ribbon fund raiser I missed while waiting for Brittany to make up her mind?

In all seriousness, I still feel like a teenager.  I remember it all too well.  I'm known to sing "Teen Angst" by Cracker to my 16-year old when drama unfolds...I need another folk singer like I need a HOLE in my head...and she just looks at me perplexed.  I know she's trying to find herself and what she is and to stand out from the crowd.  Your middle teens to early 20s is all about proving you're different and finding what the world means and your place in it, while having a total and complete existential crisis. I wouldn't relive it if I had a choice, but I get to as a parent.

I'm just trying to find the balance between letting her experiment and knowing when to put my foot down.  I'm trying to walk a tight rope between knowing I've taught her to do right, and finding the faith within myself to know she can do it.  I'm on a unicycle in this Circus of Parenthood juggling when to let her learn lessons on her own and when to step in and protect her.

She's a smart kid. A different kid than I was.  She has different hobbies and likes, and she's outgoing when I was very shy. My only goal, as her mother, is that she is loving, kind, peaceful, and confident. That she finds what and who she loves.  That she learns to weave in and out of the lanes of this rush hour that is life and doesn't take the HOV lane for through traffic.  That she enjoys the journey and finds in her heart what makes this world better for her.

I'm not terrified of her generation.  I'm not terrified of teenagers.  I'm terrified that in all of it, somewhere, I'll fail. Mr. Vonnegut, true terror is realizing you're Muhammad Ali against the ropes, and your rope-a-dope better work. Its a kid that put you there, and you sure as hell better have trained...not you them.

And most of all, they give us hope.  They give us hope that idealization still lives.  They stand in our face and make us have acceptance.  They stand and say, "Embrace change. Accept us...our vision."  We taught them that vision.  We owe them, at the least, a look.