You See What Happened Is I Raised A Teenager

My son is approaching 18 this year. He’s funny as hell, but of course he doesn’t say cute things anymore like, “Mommy come wipe my butt,” or “Mommy! I went pee-pee!”

I digress. He actually has said these things but in an annoying, sarcastic look-at-me-I’m-funny-and-embarrassing-my-mom way when around his friends.

What he doesn’t know is I’m not easily embarrassed. I’m excited he adopted my sarcastic attitude towards life. It’s perhaps the only thing that will save him from hating people in the long run.

Most of my blogging friends fall into the “mommy blogger” category. They blog about their young children and the never-ending hilarious antics.

I like that, although sometimes I feel left out because the things my son says and does now happen in such rapid fire succession that for me to blog about each day with him would be exhausting.

A while back a friend of mine wrote a piece titled “I can’t be your friend”.

It’s a great piece about how she can’t socially interact with others right now because of various reasons including but not limited to being tired on a consistent basis and also her kids and family being number one in life right now.

Having a family does that to you. Kids do that to you. Especially young ones. Even more so if you have multiple children.

Reading her piece I had to laugh and smile as it took me back to when my son was young.  I have to admit that when my son hit 13 years-old life became more quiet so to speak. He wasn’t overly dramatic anymore. He was too busy trying to figure out why his body was changing. Where was all that hair coming from? Why was it there? Why he was suddenly taller than both of his parents.

I had that time period where I could socialize a little at a time again. He was old enough to leave at home alone with maybe a friend or two. I could confidently go out for a couple of hours for dinner with a friend myself and not worry too much.

Then he hit 15 years-old and started driving, I found no more time for friends. I found that by the end of the day, between work and home life with a budding teenager, I had NO energy whatsoever and what little sanity I had left had to be saved like rollover minutes for the next day.

So when I read her post, I thought, “Hey! Don’t think you have the market cornered on not having a life! You don’t get to say you’re the only one who has dropped “friends” into acquaintance status!”

Believe me when I say I have been known to ignore my phone because I just don’t want to hear about your life.

Wanna know what I’ve been busy doing? Why I could care less more and more every day about still being friends with people anymore?

1.  I’m too busy worrying about what my son is doing every minute of his waking day. Is he getting safely to school on time? I swear that every time I’m sitting at work and I hear sirens, I softly question if he’s OK. I may have even, in the beginning when he started driving, texted him and asked him if he’s OK.  I then turned around and yelled at him for answering that text.

Any parent that tells me they haven’t freaked out knowing their kid is out there among hundreds of careless drivers is lying. Your pants should be on fire. I also worry if he’s getting along with others at school or being bullied. Did he get a restful night’s sleep or stay up getting homework done? You get the point. I worry.

2.  I work A LOT of hours. Yes I work to pay my bills and have food in our bellies but there are teenager emergencies that often come up. My son plays a lot of basketball and is always needing new shoes or a trip to sports medicine to have a sore knee checked out.

He also goes to coffee shops to do homework. With a girl. That’s a whole other story in itself.

Another reason I don’t want anything to do with you right now? I leave for work before the sun comes up and get home after the sun has gone down. Even if the sun was still out, I’d just want to sleep, but I can’t.

3.  I stay awake at night worrying about what is going to happen if my son gets married and I don’t like my in-laws.  This is even ridiculous to me but let me explain. I’m at that point in life where my son is dating and I finally met his first girlfriend. He says she isn’t his girlfriend and maybe that’s true but once he took her out to dinner at a nice Mexican restaurant on my dime (see number 2) and brought her by the house afterwards, I was terribly afraid.

I mean she seems really nice. She’s beautiful and was wearing a dress and he was all dressed up and his truck smelled like cologne and teenage hormones and well yeah. Now he’s getting married in my worried mind. I know she will be the first in a long line of girls and eventually women that he finds and goes out with to dinner and GOD-FORBID has a sexual relationship with, but what if she’s not?

I can’t spend time with you because I’m too tired from staying awake all night planning weddings and thinking of how I’m going to hide my flask of whiskey at family get togethers later on and how I’m going to explode when he gets his heart broke if it doesn’t  work out.

4.  I’m single and don’t really care about your latest fight or hearing about how last week your boy/girlfriend was a douche but this week they are so awesome. Ok so I’m not exactly single, but I am in a relaxed relationship where we don’t live together or put heavy expectations on each other. I have no plans to be with anyone else romantically either. I can barely keep this guy interested much less entertain another one!

I’ve got too much to worry about. Weddings to plan, work and in-laws. I’m also almost 20 years out of high school and that drama crap is way in the past. I don’t want a friend who only calls or texts me when they are down because someone became a spokesperson for Summer’s Eve. If I even had the time, that’s not really a friend anyway. So no. Go away.

So in conclusion, my friend wrote that she would just see everyone on her 4th child’s graduation day.

I don’t know but I think after she reads this, she might just realize that it’s never going to happen. I think once you have kids you are forever too busy for anything.

Or you just drink until you can find that five minutes of peace in your life.

By the way, moms drink wine. Lots of wine. And whiskey. And vodka.  All the alcohol.