I have a friend who is dealing with an unruly teenage daughter right now.  I am the wrong person to turn to for advice about this, because I remember being a teenage girl.  I didn’t enjoy it, and as a residual effect, I don’t much like being around anyone from the ages of 13-23.  Let me give you a glimpse into my teenage years.

Things were going along smoothly until I hit age fifteen. Up until then, my biggest crises had been getting boobs in the fifth grade and the fact that while a boy named Adam R. was hopelessly in love with me, I was the victim of an unrequited crush on Jeff O., who in fact had a thing for Roxanne R., the prettiest girl in class.  (Isn’t that the way it always is?)  Jeff had broken my heart by roller skating all night with Roxanne on a class outing; I listened to the '45 of “We Belong” by Pat Benatar incessantly for months.  But really, my teenage attitude didn’t come in to full bloom until the summer when my mother refused to let me go see the Grateful Dead in concert.

She was being totally unreasonable, of course. What’s the worst that could happen to a fifteen-year-old girl alone at a Dead concert?  My mother, the smart aleck, was quick with an answer: What if I was fed a tab of LSD without my knowledge, got raped, then had my throat slashed, and Mom would be woken up in the middle of the night by the cops to go down to the morgue to identify my body?…it was all about her.  I didn’t speak to her for a month.

Mom was always telling me I couldn’t do things. Going to parties where there would be no parents but plenty of alcohol was out of the question.  Going away for the weekend with my friend Lisa and her friends Rob, Guy, and Steve was definitely forbidden. She wouldn’t even let me go shopping downtown at the store where all the hippies went without her there to embarrass me by asking if the neat-looking glass tubes they had there were some sort of fancy lamps. (But really, I was a good kid, for the most part – I didn’t know they were bongs either.  I kind of thought Mom was right on target with her lamp theory.)

As I got older, it was time to look at colleges.  Mom arranged a trip for us to take a train cross-country to combine a vacation with looking at schools.  We got to see the Grand Canyon and the coast of Malibu. She and I drove to UCLA, where I refused to get out of the car because the guy who handed us the ticket to park in the south lot had a real “attitude problem”.

My mother, who had just carted me 2,894 miles to the college I had been talking about going to since I was eleven, implied that it was not the guy in the ticket booth who had the attitude problem.  She was at the end of her rope, she said.  After all, it was not she who had wanted to take the side trip to see the house where Sharon Tate was murdered, but she’d acquiesced without an attitude, hadn’t she?  I needed to get my skinny butt and my gigantic attitude out of the car RIGHT NOW or she would show me an attitude problem.  It was the first time I’d ever seen flames literally shoot out of her eyes.  I took the UCLA campus tour.

In all fairness, I never came home pregnant nor on drugs, and my parents never got a call from the cops saying I’d been arrested.  However, as I said, I do remember being a teenager, and I can tell you this: it was not fun for any of us involved.

PS - Mom, thanks for taking me to see UCLA and for the drive-by of the Manson Murder House.  Very cool.

I am a child of the ‘80s.  I find it perfectly reasonable when actors want to be politicians.  I cried when Corey Haim died.  I do not apologize for this; it was not a bad time to grow up, and had a big influence on who I am today.  Would I be as fun-loving as an adult if I hadn’t had a Cabbage Patch Kid as a child?  Could I relate to these kids today with their Twilight crap if I hadn’t had a similar obsession with Duran Duran at their age...and as an adult?  (How is it that John Taylor manages to look better every year when he was so good looking to start with?)

Are YOU a child of the ‘80s?  Take a look and see if any (or all) of these describe you:
  

• You can remember a time when Bret Michaels didn’t wear a bandana, did wear lipstick, and you thought “Talk Dirty to Me” was the sexiest song ever.
• You thought Wacky Packages were hilarious.
• Your school had a smoking area.
• Michael J. Fox was famous only for playing Alex P. Keaton, and Johnny Depp was known only as the cute guy on 21 Jump Street.
• When you got in to a car, was no such thing as a seatbelt law or child car seat requirements, and only rich people had electric windows.
• You can recite the words to the Facts of Life theme song.
• You realized with horror that the hole in the ozone layer meant impending doom – not for the planet, but for your beloved Aqua Net.
• You remember when MTV was created, and all it aired were music videos and the occasional break for MTV News.
• Only preppies wore Izod shirts and Reeboks.  The cool kids were wearing sweatshirts with ripped shoulders and jelly bracelets, all in fluorescent.
• Your biggest headache of the week was trying to find a replacement needle for your record player.
• Coolest Concert EVER:  Band Aid.

Perhaps you laugh.  Perhaps you want to debate with me whether “Feed the World” was better or worse than “We are the World.”  But the truth is, the horrible things that Baby Boomers think Generation X will remember – the cold war ending, Reaganomics, Rock Hudson dying of AIDS – aren’t necessarily what we as adults think about when we reminisce about our childhoods.  We like to remember the good times – when David Bowie crooned “Let’s Dance” and felt fedoras were all the rage.  (Were they all the rage?  Now that I’m thirty years out of the 80’s, my memory’s not so good.)  I like to remember a time when if you weren’t sure if you liked a cereal, you could ask Mikey to try it. When said cereals came with a real prize inside.  And, of course, whenall the radio stations played Duran Duran – not just the oldies station.

Sunday was a beautiful, albeit bitterly cold day. Jason was excited about his latest reporting assignment, a feature on recreational ice skating. We headed out to the hockey arena, looking forward to an afternoon of skating before going out with my in-laws to dinner and a play that evening.

Apparently, we were too caught up in the excitement of the day to smell the stink of disaster that hung in the air.

We rented our skates, joked about needing padding for our behinds, and headed out onto the ice.  Twenty minutes later, I was surrounded by concerned staff (one who was looking a little sick), wondering how my kneecap had managed to make its way to the back of my knee.

The helpful doctors at the hospital ER confirmed something I had already started to suspect:  ice skating is nothing like riding a bicycle.  You do forget, it will not come back to you right away, and anyone over the age of 21 should not attempt it at home.

That’s right.  For my 38th birthday, I found myself on crutches, with my knee so swollen that the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man’s legs look like a Rockette’s compared to mine.

I’ve had better birthdays.

Nothing is broken (except my ego), but I won’t know if I’ve torn my meniscus until the swelling goes down, which has yet to happen. I’ve quickly realized how fortunate I was in the past to be able to do things like carry a cup of coffee on my own or go to the bathroom without asking my coworkers to help me with the doors (those locks on the stalls can be tricky with crutches!)  It’s very humbling to have to ask my friends to help me up the stairs or to microwave my lunch for me.  Poor Jason has had to help me dress myself, tie my shoes, and maneuver up and down the stairs.  My birthday was particularly tough, and when I hobbled home that night, I had a mild case of crybabyitis, followed by a bout of feeling sorry for myself. 

Things perked up quickly, though.  Jason had stopped by his parents’ house that day, and his mother sent him home with dinner for the two of us, which officially qualifies her as a saint in my book.  My mother called me and let me wallow in self pity for a little while, which was really all I needed – someone to confirm for me that the whole situation did indeed suck, but that this too shall pass.  And then Jason surprised me with my birthday gift – two volumes of Bloom County and a pound of Munson’s chocolates, which worked wonders to improve my mood.  I was going to be all right after all.

So the lesson for today, boys and girls, is that if you are even thinking that although you haven’t been ice skating in 25 years, it might be fun to try again, DON’T do it.  It won’t be fun and you will wind up with legs like the ones pictured below.  Sure, it will be amusing when your nephews want to bring in photos of your injury for show-and-tell at school, but other than that, it really isn’t worth it.

The other lesson is that good chocolates, funny comic strips, and great family and friends can cure any ailment.

Now where is Jason with my @!$!! coffee?

I've been feeling a little old lately.  It started about a month ago, when one of the employees at work was commenting about how she was having a bad hair day.  I told her not to be ridiculous - when she started showing up to work with a hairdo like Andy Warhol's, that's when she should worry. "Yeah, um, I don't know who that is," she replied, and I wanted to cry. I was now so old that my jokes about a famous artist's notoriously bad hair were obsolete. 
I'd forgotten about this until Jason and I went to a comedy club last weekend. One of the comedians did a five minute routine about how 'Gen-Y'ers are not aging gracefully. Uh-oh. That's a whole generation younger than me - how can they be aging at all, gracefully or otherwise? That would imply that I am!
The final nail in my coffin was when I was rocking out to this new radio station on the way to work. Every song that came on was something I loved and knew all the words to. It was fantastic! I listened eagerly to hear the call letters of the station. It turned out to be 100.5 - easy listening, light (or is it lite?) rock radio. Sigh.
I was grumpily ranting to my mother and sister on the way to New York about all the fresh young whippersnappers around today and how they dress like hooligans. My mother, who has been handling getting older a lot better than I have, shook her head at me. "Come on," she said, pulling me by my ear. "You need to spend a few minutes in a very special place."
She dragged me into the Disney Store at Times Square. My sister and I hugged the plush Dumbo dolls and giggled over the Mickey Mouse slippers. One of the salesmen helped me find the magic wand of my favorite princess (Belle from Beauty and the Beast, of course) and when I waved the wand in front of a magic mirror, Belle appeared with a special message just for me! We found poseable dolls and big girl size tiaras. We had the time of our lives!
Okay, so maybe I AM getting older. But ten minutes surrounded by the magic of Disney will turn anyone into a kid again!

PS- Be sure to order your copy of Dark Things IV today - including my fabulous short story, "People Person"!