blog entry

The Sex Police

Our kids, the sexless weekend

No one tells you that your loving little babies and charming cheerful children turn into the sex police when they become teenagers. And here is the root of the sexless weekend.

First of all, they stay up later than we do. No privacy.  I’m on average a later night person than most, hitting the hay somewhere around midnight to 1 am.  Teenagers...it is like a competition to see who can stay up later.  I swear to God they are sneaking coffee drinks, Pepsi, or Adderall from their friends to sit up on the phone until 3 am.  Maybe it is the sheer stimulation of hearing about how their best friend’s ex best friend hooked up with their ex boyfriend’s cousin’s brother. Titillating.  Let’s be real: obviously, they are NOT having a sexless weekend.

In the meantime, as a good mother, I am trying to stay up late to absolutely make sure my teen gets in on curfew-sober-which means I stay up till they get home.  After swilling 3 diet cokes (with Sonic ice...makes it seem like a party treat), I can’t go to sleep until 2 or 3 on any given Friday and Saturday night.

Between normal life, like working, doing laundry, planning for my upcoming breast cancer fundraiser, cleaning the house, cooking, swimming a little bit for fun and exercise, I wait out the work week in some semblance of hopeful anticipation that perhaps I will shake off the stress of everyday life and underneath the layers of thought, activity, and worry, I will find a sex drive.

Between diet cokes and B movies on T.V. amazingly, a random sexual thought might actually occur on Friday night. Is it real or is it Memorex? Yet, simply talking to your partner about being worried about what your teen is actually doing this given weekend night, even though they said they were going to the movies and off to one friend’s house whose parents really are home, sexual thoughts tend to get lost in the angst and plotting to secretly spy on your given teenager.  Should I go buy a ticket to Batman and see if he’s really in there?

The problem with teens is that they are quite unpredictable.  They go out and plan to stay out to the very last moment of life they can squeeze in before they hit the curfew...on some days.  Yet, on others, they fly into the house at 9:30 just to grab something to eat, a new shirt, a CD, a video game, or extra gas money, while promising they will trim the yard when they mow it tomorrow if only they can get $5 extra.

Every teen parent knows the minute they head to bed (God forbid, don’t start anything on the couch--it’s a teen magnet), the front door will pop open. 

“Mom, where are you?”

I lie there quiet, if I was lucky enough to have actually heard the door.

 “Are you in there?” a knock raps on my bedroom door. How he got upstairs in record time, when I can’t get him to go to the mailbox in an hour is beyond my comprehension.

“Uh, yeah.”

“Where’s Jack (his stepdad)?”

“He went to bed early with me.”

“Oh, GROSS...I’m outta here.”

Caught by the sex police again. Another sexless weekend.

Well, it’s better than the time his sister knocked on our door at 1:47 am and said, “I can hear you!” Oh, geez...11 year olds don’t sleep on the weekends at night EITHER!

The sex police come in many forms and at younger and younger ages these days. No wonder 1 in 5 adults has a sexless marriage.  I bet they all have a sex police in their house, too.