My Piece of the Rock

We're Not in Kansas Anymore

So I’m pretty sure I know how it happened. I’m just trying to figure out when it happened. The shift was slow and gradual, sneaking up on me so that it caught me unaware. And I think I’ve been in denial for a while, refusing to acknowledge what I’ve become…the Mom Behind the Curtain.

 

See, I used to know everything. I was the Great and Powerful Mom. Every day all day they’d ask me question upon question: “Wat dat, Mommy? Where we going, Mommy? Why’s the sky blue, Mommy? What do you think would happen if I rode my bike in the pool, Mommy?” It didn’t matter what the question was, I knew it all. What a good thing!

 

But I’m pretty sure, somewhere in the midst of this nonstop quest for information that often interfered with my basic functioning as a sane individual, I began to answer, “I don’t know.” And, as the questions got harder and my need for peace and quiet increased, I also began to answer: “Hmmm, I’m not sure. Go ask your father. Go look it up. What do you think, honey?” Along with the contagiously convenient: “I don’t know.”

 

The sad thing is…my strategy worked, at least if my two teenagers are any indication. Very clearly, I know NOTHING at this point in my life. And it’s my own doing. I told them I didn’t know. Why, oh why, did they have to listen to me about that? It’s just not fair.

 

But admitting you have a problem means you’re halfway to fixing your problem, right? And actually, I think I’m more than halfway to reclaiming my status as the Great and Powerful Mom thanks to my new offensive tactic. It’s based on my oldest son’s theory of life which is: Why deal with facts when you can live in your own reality!

 

I’m adopting that little pearl of wisdom and from now on, I’m making stuff up! Never again will I say, “I don’t know.” I’m going to have an answer for everything, and really, who’s going to be the wiser? And just like Dorothy and her three friends, my children will once again come begging me for an audience in which I can share my vast knowledge of the universe with them. And all will be right with the world…

 

So I tested the waters yesterday with my youngest. He was giving me the play by play on the massive bug habitat that the neighbor kids had created with locusts and worms and mud and grass and then…whammo! Out of nowhere I got hit with, “What color are termites, Mom?”

 

I flipped through my mental file folders with rising panic. The termite folder was empty except for the random tidbit that they ate most of the historic wooden buildings in New Orleans. That wasn't going to cut it. I almost said, "I don't know, honey" when I remembered that we're not in Kansas anymore...and I made something up.

 

“Brown,” I said with authority. Max seemed to buy it, so I continued. “Yup, they’re brown and little, kind of like a mini-beetle, and they like to live in dirt or mud. And they also like to eat wood, brown wood, ‘cause it matches their wing color…” Max was nodding along with me. I felt slightly guilty, but not enough to abandon my brilliant new parenting plan. Because I think I’m well on my way to becoming the Great and Powerful Mom once again. And that, I’m quite sure, is a very good thing!

Gifted Education, Vegas Style

First her arm brushed mine. Once, twice, three times. Then her hip bumped mine in the same triplet rhythm. Since it was still 85 degrees at 10:30 p.m., I had it on the tip of my tongue to say, with some irritation, “Could you please not walk on top of me?” when I felt her fingertips casually brush mine. No, not brush, seek…purposefully. Almost immediately our fingers were interlaced, and we walked on that way in the steamy Las Vegas night, hip to hip, arm to arm, hands sandwiched together in between. I honestly didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

She’s never been a clingy kid, this independent girl of mine. As a baby she never wanted to be rocked to sleep, just put down in her crib where she’d smile and stretch out, happy to be “home”…alone. That should have told me a lot about the years to come.

 

And, as much as the eye rolls, hair flips and head snaps have been part of the tween (now teen) years, it seems like her confidence has grown in proportion to her attitude. Typical tween/teen issues haven’t bothered her like I remembering them bothering me and my friends. Whether she lets teenage angst run off her like water off a duck’s back or just rolls her eyes and declares, “Whatever!” to the latest conspiracy or injustice in her youthful world, I have come to think of my daughter as impervious to stress and pressure. Yet as my beautiful Midwestern middle-schooler surveyed the griminess and garishness of Sin City at night, I felt her grip tighten and her body mold itself to mine, and I knew there was a chink in the armor. And that’s a good thing…

Because in my momly opinion, Las Vegas at night should inspire sensory overload in a thirteen year old, and we weren’t even out on the Strip, just on the walkway which runs overhead. In truth, our Las Vegas adventure was not exactly a family vacation. It was the ultimate grand prize awarded by Schwan’s Foods to my daughter and three of her friends from Hickory Creek Middle School for a songwriting contest on global hunger awareness. As part of an ongoing lunch time jam session with school music teacher Dave Wonder, Kai had written the lyrics and music last spring, performed the song with three other girls (Rebecca Gerske, Angie Bravo and Hanna Samawi) and entered their music video in the contest…then won!

Yet even though visions of American Idol have danced in their heads, this trip was not only a dream come true (corporate jets, stretch limos, backstage passes, bodyguards and playing at the Vegas House of Blues for 1,200 National School Nutrition Conference attendees) but also a little gifted education done outside the box. Because as my mom, who just retired from fifty years in education, said after a pre-Vegas rehearsal, “What do you do, as the teacher, to take kids like this to the next level?”

 

I’d argue that you do what Dave Wonder did and give them a way to keep on exploring the gifts they’ve been given, nurturing their independence and encouraging them to soar, all good things. Not surprisingly, this trip has them planning for the future, trying to figure out how to make this good thing last. Yet in my momly opinion, discovering that my girl may still need her hand held at times was both a gift and an education and, perhaps, the best good thing of all.

Mothering and Mind Melds

As a psychologist, my dad had a lifelong interest in people’s brains, especially how one’s understanding of the world developed from infancy to adulthood. When my oldest son Alex was a baby, my dad used to watch him watching the world and finally, unable to contain himself any longer, would go over to Alex and sit forehead to forehead with him, staring into his eyes and saying to me: “Time for the Mind Meld…I wonder what’s going on inside that little brain, don’t you?”

And I often do…still…even though my oldest will be sixteen at the end of the summer. Like my father, one of the things that I find most interesting as a parent is watching your child morph into his or her own person. It’s sort of like watching a potter at work on his wheel…spinning, molding, pulling, coaxing…until suddenly the form begins to take shape out of that lump of clay and you get glimmers of what the end product will be. But just glimmers. There’s a lot of reshaping and recreating going on as the pot evolves.

Yet as unresolved as that shape shifting sometimes feels, it’s the very process of defining and refining that’s so amazing. Case in point, my soon-to-be-sixteen Alex ran distance this year for track. Never one for competitive sports, Alex (in his younger years) sat on the field and picked dandelions during a short experiment with t-ball, walked the lines on the gym floor during indoor soccer and stayed as far away from the ball as possible during park district basketball. My husband and I finally gave up on encouraging him to try organized sports, yet Alex was an athletic kid, born with sturdy legs and a kinesthetic awareness that far surpassed anything his parents possessed. So it was encouraging (for his parents) to finally see him join volleyball and run track last year in eighth grade. It was even more encouraging to see him commit to indoor and outdoor track this year at East. Little glimmers of Alex’s inner athlete started shining through as he experienced teamwork, hard work and fitness as a lifestyle choice for the first time.

And then it happened. At the last official meet of the season, something clicked and he really looked like he knew what he was doing out on the track. Stride, pacing, breathing, confidence…everything synched…and Alex took twenty seconds off his best time. I don’t know who was more excited, him or me.

And not because he won the race (he didn’t) or because I think he’s now a shoe in for the Junior Olympic team (he’s not) but because he’s starting to figure out the value of perseverance and planning and focus and foresight, all good things that can help him navigate life. As for me, I feel like the Master Potter is at work, shaping Alex with his invisible hand. No doubt the glazing stage is almost here, and I can’t wait to see what brilliant colors emerge after firing. After years of watching and wondering what’s going on in that boy brain, I’m thinking the end product will be a very good thing indeed.

Don't Mess With Your Mother

I'm tired of being ignored, so I have sadly resorted to kidnapping and ransom notes to get my point across...

 

The offending suitcase that precipitated the kidnapping...

The Curse of the Mini-Me

I think you really have to be in the right frame of mind to enjoy Mike Myers' Austin Powers character. For some people, that's all the time...for others, it's never. I generally fall in the never category, yet, that said, I've had Mini-Me on the mind this morning. Mini-Me, for the uninitiated is Dr. Evil's midget clone, about whom, upon his creation, Dr. Evil remarks, "Breathtaking...I'll call him Mini-Me."

In my experience, it seems to me that we parents are annoyingly, subconsciously and repeatedly driven to mold our kids into what we personally don't want to be, and yet perhaps because we are so busy picking the speck out their eyes to see the log in our own, our children become those very Mini-Me's in spite of us or maybe because of us.

And like I've said, I'm not a physics kind of girl, but I do know my Newton, as his third law of motion, to me, rather neatly sums up life...for every action there will be an equal and opposite reaction. So truly, according to that principle, the one person Mini-Me will drive most crazy is the person who modeled those annoying behaviors/habits in the first place. So what's a mom to do with that, I ask? I can't help myself in correcting my child's "flaws" and "imperfections"...it's my God-given duty, right?

But this morning, I had a revelation. At 6:00 a.m. I made my way upstairs to wake my Sleeping Beauty; however, she was already awake (sort of) and sitting up in bed. As long as she didn't need my alarm clock impersonation, I decided to dive right into pleasant morning conversation on a favorite topic of ours, her room, so to speak, although room is really a loose term.

So I say encouragingly, "It's 6:05. You need to get up. Oh, you're up. That's good!"

No real response. Just a bleary-eyed stare. But I'm not discouraged. I press on.

"So, about this..." and I make a wide sweeping arm gesture to indicate I'd like to discuss her room, so to speak.

"What about it?" the Royal Kawg (short for K-Dawg) yawns from her regal bed throne, the loyal J-Dog curled up at her feet, still dreaming of squirrels and fresh spring dirt and oblivious to this mother-daughter comedy-drama unfolding around her.

"What about it? How about, 'Where is it?'" I reply with less encouragement. "I can't see your room. I can barely see you."

"You're just jealous!" the Royal Kawg declares with a smirk and flips her hair, covering, I'm sure, a major eye roll.

Okay, that did it for me. I laughed out loud and retreated in defeat. "Jealous, yeah right," I muttered, trudging back down the stairs while deciding on my revenge...the Royal Kawg and her jealousy-inspiring room would be on the blog today for Friday Fun Day. Take that, child of mine!

But the truth hurts, and as I sat reviewing the pictures I'd snapped after she'd hustled off to band, I felt like I'd been smacked upside the head. True, I can't really see her floor. True, she lives out of her laundry baskets, which drives me insane because her multiple fashion options for the day get mixed in with the clean, folded clothes and the dirty stuff on the floor and then when I complain, EVERYTHING (clean, dirty, other) ends up in the dirty laundry pile. True, her closet has stuff spilling out of it (clean laundry, dirty laundry, assorted shoes, musical instruments, treasures from years gone by), making it look like it threw up and then some. True, any horizontal surface is covered with books and papers and lotions and jewelry and picture frames and knick knacks.

And, truth be told, I suddenly realized that if I went and took a photo of my bedroom, it would be a mirror image of my daughter's, just slightly less chaotic because I don't have as much space and hey, I'm 27 years older so give me a little credit here. But at the moment I'm having a meltdown because I can see...I've created Mini-Me! Agggh!!!

And no doubt she's right...I probably am jealous. Because I'm an adult, and I know better...I know that I should put my clean laundry away and not leave it in the laundry basket for easy access and I should haul my dirty laundry down to the laundry room before it overtakes the floor and I should not cover every horizontal surface in my room with books and papers and lotions and jewelry and picture frames and knick knacks and I should organize my closet so that it doesn't look like it threw up...and then some. But I don't always do that 'cause I've got bigger fish to fry most days and who's really going to be in my room anyway, besides my husband, so I'm thinking people should really just mind their own business...which is frequently the same sentiment my daughter shares with me when I suggest her room, so to speak, needs work.

Aggggh! The Curse of Mini-Me has struck our home! No longer can I defend myself with "Because I said so!" or "Do as I say, not as I do!" Curses, foiled again! But mark my words, I'll be baaaaack...

And because fair is fair...

School Spirit Ben Stein Style

So I couldn't help feeling like I was in Ferris Bueller's Day Off last night as I ran my son's freshman schedule at Open House. In particular, science class was setting off warning bells in my head with an instructor who announced he doesn't really care for "those computers" (I swear I heard 'doze' computers...as in 'Da Bears' and I really wanted to jump up and shout, "You mean those dang, new-fangled contraptions that have advanced science light years ahead of what was ever believed possible??" But I didn't. I didn't want to do the extra credit...see below.) and who doesn't check his email so if we have questions (which we shouldn't because he's only ever had to fail students because they didn't turn in work not because the material was too hard, so read between the lines and get the message which is "Parents, please do not call!") we are to call him on the telephone and if, for some reason we can't get through to him by phone, we are to call the "main office up there" (or maybe it was "up der") and ask for the department chair who will get the message to him (I literally had visions of a little science teacher emergency relay system passing the phone message hand over hand down the hall from the "main office up there" to this guy who would slowly turn his owl-like head in disbelief that a parent wanted to talk with him.)

Yet, should my son have trouble with the material or forget to study for the test (which already happened with the chapter 1 test on Monday) and find that his grade is slipping, he has the generous opportunity to complete the Extra Credit, which would be...a leaf collection! And, yes, folks, this is your grandma's leaf collection from her grade school days. While it garners an additional 50 points added on to your semester grade, I envision the process as being as exciting (read: tediously painful) as this video portrays. My guess is, knowing my son, he will be running frantically after the "elephant truck" on the night before the collection is due, desperately grasping at already-dried, semi-pressed leaves not sucked up the giant hose while being forced to actually speak to the adult driver.  Motivated by sheer panic at not finishing said leaf collection, he will be knocking on the truck window and begging, "Sir, sir, please, do you know what kind of leaf this is?" (native species only, BTW, none of those darn Japanese or Asian or European tree leaves here in the American science class, thank you very much!)

Which leads me to believe he will be paying his grandma for one-time leaf collection use rights because she actually still has hers. I wonder what she'll charge... Anyone, anyone?

Survival of the Fittest

"Alex, how do you survive?" the poor boy asked with such pitiful hopelessness in his tone. Clearly, he wasn't going to make it through the ordeal...

Which was riding in a car with two 7th grade girls, whose ever-increasing maniacal babble was soon going blow out all of our eardrums, but really, that would have been a saving grace.

The girls, sitting in the back row, had been ramping up their hysterical giggling ever since we had picked up Alex's two friends, brothers with no sisterly experience to prepare them for the constant barrage of tween girl chatter. I felt for them. I really did.  And yet, at the same time, I wanted to say, "Hey, welcome to our world!"

At first Alex didn't even know his friend was speaking to him. Either from the sheer noise level alone or from his learned self-defense mechanism of mock hibernation, Alex sat in a trance-like state in the front seat, staring out the window, willing himself, I think, to be transported to a neighboring car.

Watching his friend's head sadly shaking in the rear view mirror, I poked Alex, just like wiggling the mouse to make the computer come out of sleep mode. "Huh? What?" Alex looked dazed and confused.

"Your friend is speaking to you," I said, very slowly and clearly. "He wants to know how you survive that?" I jerked my head in a backwards motion towards Those Who Must Not Be Named.

"Oh. What?" Alex asked, clearly still partially in self defense mode.

"I said, 'How do you survive?'" his friend repeated, dejectedly staring at the floor of my car. His 6th grade brother sat motionless and terrified, watching the drama unfold.

"I just ignore them," Alex finally managed.

"What?! How? They're so loud!" his friend complained.

Which must have triggered the tween "all about me" hot button because suddenly the girls switched from performing for an unengaged audience to interacting with us, kinda sorta. "What? Did he just call us loud?" Insane giggling erupted from the back seat.  "We're not loud!" they shrieked (loudly) and continued their juvenile, girly variation of Whose on First, as related to summer band (I think, I couldn't be sure, they were speaking some sort of dialect not used when I was 12).

Alex's friend shook his head and groaned. His brother's eyes grew wider as he shrank back into his seat, desperately trying to put as much distance between himself and the girls as possible. Alex shrugged his shoulders and resumed his catatonic state.

Riiiight, as Bill Cosby says.

But the really funny thing is, as a former 12-year-old girl, I have to say I remember doing exactly the same thing at their age. It's got to be in the girl DNA. I am quite sure if you were able to extract a tissue sample, you would see all the little puberty hormones rushing around inside and bumping into all the logic cells, contaminating them with girl cooties, which in turn causes the logic cells to begin to warp and mutate, which produces a chain reaction in the way girls are able to process information and spit it back out. Usual side effects include hyperdrive speech, insane and uncontrollable giggling and massive eye rolling and head tossing (once thought to be the body's natural reaction to shake the madness from the brain, now known to be part of the disease itself). There is no cure, other than what Rapunzel's father tried, and the girls themselves develop an immunity to the condition, sort of like putting a bunch of chicken pox survivors together. Which is why the moms can likely tolerate their daughters better than the brothers or the fathers or the poor saps who never had a chance to develop a natural immunity by having a sister or a daughter. I figured 15 minutes stuck in the drive through line at Culver's ought to give Alex's friends a good dose of anti-girl immunoglobins to help raise their evolutionary chances.

Like I said...survival of the fittest!

What Not to Wear (Ever Again)

Maybe because of my writer's Declaration of Independence or maybe because I return monthly to the scene of the crime, I've been repeatedly reminded of this awful fashion faux pas I made the spring of my 6th grade year. Never the fashion queen, I had a sense of style shaped by 70's polyester, Sears and a mother who, as I've said before, had a passion for mixing prints and plaids, all combined with my own love of color, especially complementary colors that were opposite each other on the color wheel.

And to her credit, I'm thinking that, in my mom's mind, this little home ec experiment was just me sowing my independent seeds, so kudos to her parenting philosophy that strengthened my id and ego. However, that being said, looking back I can't believe she let me walk out the door in my bizarre get up. And walk is a relative term as well. I basically had no real knowledge of how to sew (but lack of knowledge never stopped me), and so the floor length draw string skirt I made was basically a long column of green and pink floral print material (think Little House on the Prairie, except dollars to doughnuts, Mary and Laura could sew their way out of a covered wagon). No slit of any sort, so I shuffled along. No real drawstring gathering, so I basically just had a rope in a 1" pocket at the top of the skirt.

With this stunning design, I paired a pink short sleeve knit sweater with white trim that I had bought on my own for about 50 cents at the Bargain Box, a second hand shop within walking (sorry, shuffling) distance from my house. Again, I'm sure my mother was under the impression that, at 12, I was building up my self-confidence and my character by sewing my own clothes and shopping solo. And I think it wasn't until I had my own 12 year old daughter, whose wardrobe selection I find I must monitor to a degree, that I realized the bold idiocy of what I'd done, more because of the venue of where I wore this stunning creation than the actual creation itself.

I now have, as a client, the homeowners association who lives in and around the country club where I made my fashion debut for a friend's bar mitzvah back in 1979, and so I am back at the scene of the crime quite regularly, much to my chagrin. And because I was said friend's guest of honor, I sat at the head table at his side for the entire event. I am quite sure all of those little Jewish fashionistas from Flossmoor attending this function were mortified at my attire but were powerless to say or do anything about the golden boy's "date" so to speak. Again, I was oblivious to the stir I likely created, my only sign that perhaps I'd not made the wisest fashion choice was my long entrance trek as they announced me and my honored friend status and I had to shuffle my way in to the banquet room, around the long U of tables to the designated chair of distinction. I can remember thinking, "Gee, I can hardly walk in this get up. Maybe I should have worn something else." Go figure!

And, in my mom's defense, it's quite possible that she suggested shopping for a more appropriate outfit, but me in my tweenish stubborn independence refused to concede defeat, in essence cutting off my nose (or ability to walk) to spite my face. Ah, to relive those innocent years, NOT! So these days, when my daughter mixes an assortment of blues and browns that so clearly don't go together or when she pairs my old fav pink and green (with a little yellow or red thrown in), I draw blood biting my tongue, trying to decide what side of the fine line I'm  going to walk in encouraging her own sense of style and not letting her walk out of the house looking like a more modern version of the twelve year old me (which she usually doesn't, just more of a color blind me on occasion).  However, as far as I know she's not invited to any bar mitzvahs as the guest of honor...yet...and she sports a wicked aversion to skirts and dresses...so I'll just bide my time (and junk my grandma's sewing machine...my chosen weapon of self-destruction) and hope my hindsight plus Stacy and Clinton's foresight is 20/20 and then some!

The Music Man

My house is rockin' this morning, and I'm loving it! My youngest son Max had his first guitar lesson today, joining the ranks of my older two who've been blessed by the teaching talents of the wonderful Dave Wonder. Summer means Mr. Wonder comes to our house, now spending an hour and a half here with my three kids.  While I used to dread my childhood piano lessons, as much as I liked music and enjoyed playing, my kids can't wait for Tuesdays. And I don't blame them.

Dave Wonder is a man of many gifts, but teaching has to be at the top of the list. Because he's fun, he makes learning fun. Because he's like a kid himself, he can relate to his students on their level. Because he's passionate about music, his passion weaves its way seamlessly throughout his instruction so that you can't tell where lessons leave off and love starts. What an awesome way to live!

And it's contagious! Praise God, Mr. Wonder saw a musical spark flickering deep in my ultra-quiet oldest son Alex when Alex had him for general music class in sixth grade and first picked up a guitar. That classroom experience led to lessons with Mr. Wonder which led to Alex getting involved with our church's youth praise band and being part of the worship team for youth group and family church services. With Mr. Wonder's support and encouragement, Alex's faith matured at an early age because of his ability to connect music to using his gifts in service to God, and that's a gift for which I'm forever thankful and can never fully repay.

For my daughter, it's a little different. A typical middle child, she sometimes gets squished with the needs of the oldest and youngest imposing on hers.  Fortunately for her, Mr. Wonder brings out her silly side, which more often than not covers a deeply sensitive, truth-seeking self. But he sees both and nurtures both, which is a gift for my daughter (and me)

And, for Max, he just wants to be like his siblings, a guitar-playing madman so he can join our fictitious band called Mom and The Bo's.  Forget this writing stuff, I'm taking my kids on the road and we're going to be like the VonTrapps... or maybe the Partridge Family would be more like it. Raising kids is hard, far harder than I ever imagined, and I imagined being a mom from the time I started babysitting in 5th grade.  Yet it seems to me that music, even though it has a thousand dialects, is a common language that my husband and I can use to speak to our kids.  And with Mr. Wonder as an interpreter, I'm thinking our fluency can do nothing but improve.  So this morning my house is rockin' and I'm loving it!

Sweet Sixteen and Never Been Kissed...NOT!

Holy cow! I knew I was a pretty unhip, dorky mom, but this morning I'm thinking I'll take those adjectives even if they doom me to a life of infamy...or maybe that's invisibility. Whatever! Definitely infinitely better than what I saw last night on tv while channel surfing...

Which was MTV's Sweet Sixteen. This show features the Sweet Sixteen birthday parties of rich kids across the U.S. No wonder most of the world thinks we're complete morons. The absolute hedonism and self-serving values in this show made me shudder, but I couldn't turn it off. It was captivating in a sick, stomach-turning way. I couldn't believe parents were not only condoning but encouraging these choices, just because they had money to burn. I had to see how it ended.

The show started with DJ (the birthday boy) telling us how his stepdad plays for the Houston Texans so they have a lot of money, and he basically gets whatever he wants. This child ended up with his party being held in an art gallery (the first space his mother picked wasn't hip enough or big enough apparently) that had room for the stage, the VIP area and the dance floor. His suit was custom made (for $5K) by a woman tailor with whom he flirted shamelessly while wondering if his girlfriend was going to let him have a good time at his own party. To appease said girlfriend, he took her shopping to some upscale boutique and let her model dresses for him, although they had to flip a coin (she won) for the final selection.  Boo hoo for him.

As if the professional hip hop artists, custom party favors, butt-shaking hired girl dancers and stretch SUV limo ride to the party for him and his closest friends weren't enough, his parents presented him with a Mercedes SUV wagon at the end of the evening for his gift. I'm lucky I didn't throw up on my couch. Now, I don't know these people. Maybe they do give millions of dollars to charities or in other ways help make the world a better place, but parent to parent, even if I had that much money, why would you spend upwards of half a million (the price quoted because DJ asked a lot how much this was all costing) on a 16-year-old's party?  And if this is sixteen, what happens at 18? At 21? How does your child learn the meaning of NO...oh, I'm sorry, DJ's mom did veto the butt-shaking dancer who "auditioned" for the party who truly looked like she'd be more at home on a pole than at DJ's Sweet Sixteen party, so I guess they do understand the concept of limiting your child's choices. Riiight.

Yet even more importantly, how does your child learn that the entire world does not revolve around him, nor does it, in reality, look like his artificial, insulated paradise? Yikes! Maybe MTV needs to start a series called Sweet Sixteen Real World, although I suppose, sadly, this wouldn't attract as many viewers.  What a commentary this is on the world in which I'm struggling to raise my kids...and it brings me back to the whole concept of whose truth is truest and whose rules rule, which got this blog going.  Stay tuned...