I'm Lindsay Ferrier, a Nashville writer with a passion for family travel, exploring Tennessee, and raising kids without losing my mind in the process. This is where I share my discoveries, along with occasional deep thoughts, pop culture tangents and a sprinkling of snark. Want to get in touch? Use the CONTACT form at the top of the page.
The Party
July 11, 2008
Just in time for Friday night, a story I’ve been dying to tell you guys.
What do you do when your teenagers want to go to a party where the parents might not be present, and some of the kids might be drinking? What do you do when your kids actually tell you what’s going on and swear up and down they won’t do anything bad, but they want to go and see what it’s all about?
I mean, it’s a tough call, isn’t it? We like to think we’d tell them “Heck, no!” then take them out to rent High School Musical 2 as a special treat, and end the evening munching popcorn and laughing together in the playroom. Yeah, right.
The truth is, if you’re anything like me, you went to parties like that when you were a teenager. You didn’t tell your parents you were going. And maybe, like me, you ended up on at least two occasions riding home with someone who had been drinking, one of whom drove 120 mph while you sat praying in the passenger seat, the other apologizing in advance for any weaving that might take place as we careened down an Atlanta interstate, because he was “definitely a little drunk.” –All this because you were too afraid of getting grounded to call your parents and ask for a ride. I want to avoid that with my girls at all costs.
So what do you do when they ask to go to “that kind of party?” Well, if you’re me, you let them go….
The full text of my latest column for the Nashville City Paper is below…
The Party Crashers
His name was Sterling and he was having a party.
That, along with a hastily scribbled phone number, was all the information my teenage stepdaughters gave us before going out last Saturday night, but it was enough.
“By the time they get to this kid’s house, we’ll know more about him than they do,” I assured my husband, opening my laptop with the grim air of Jodie Foster starring in a psychological thriller. Within minutes, I’d found the kid on Facebook. “Last name ‘Cook.’ Goes to Stratford High School. Looks a little emo to me,” I said knowledgeably.
I used a reverse phone directory to find his address and then did a property search. “2205 Robindale Court,” I said, snapping my laptop shut. “Why don’t we drive by and check this little tea party out?” I smiled with the quiet assurance of one who knows she has the title of World’s Nosiest Stepmother firmly in her grasp. “I just want to make sure our girls know where to draw the line.”
Hubs nodded in agreement and with that, we strapped our two pajama-clad younger children into our SUV and headed for Sterling’s house.
I should admit that the drive-by idea didn’t start with me. When I was a teenager, my mom used to swear each weekend that she and my dad would show up when I least expected it. “You won’t know we’re there,” she’d say ominously. “You’ll never even see us. But we’ll find out exactly what you’re up to.”
Thanks to her dark promises, I was constantly on edge at parties, peering guiltily around as I sipped my lukewarm beer and half-expecting my mom’s head to pop out from behind a ficus or to spot the unmistakable tips of her Ferragamos peeping out beneath the floor-length drapes.
I called her on the phone yesterday and told her about our undercover journey to Casa del Sterl. She laughed raucously, in the annoying way those who’ve already raised teens laugh at the people who are still enduring it. “Oh, please,” I said crankily. “You did the same thing, right?”
Wrong. As it turned out, my parents actually never bothered showing up to a single Boone’s Farm-fueled adolescentfest, at least while I was in high school. “We felt like we would hear if things got out of hand,” she explained. “Either you would confess or another parent would call.” Heh. Keep dreaming, Mom.
It wasn’t until I’d gone off to college that my mother finally made good on her threats. I had dropped out of my sorority, begun hanging out with questionable characters known as Townies, and could usually be found inside a dusty coffee shop called Jittery Joe’s.
Worried, my parents secretly made the hour-and-a-half drive from Atlanta to Athens, Ga. so they could see Joe’s for themselves. They didn’t tell me they were coming, but a few days later, the dam of deceit finally burst and my mom called me, crying. Even today, the horror of that visit clings to her like armpit odor to a vintage polyester shirt.
“It looked like weirdoes hung out there,” she remembered shakily when I asked her about it on the phone. “It had marijuana in the air. It had… incense!” This shows how clueless my mom was. I mean, come on. Marijuana? In the summer of ’94, heroin was the drug of choice.
But back to Robindale Court. When we arrived, the street was dark and quiet. Cars dotted the roadside, my 17-year-old’s among them. As we stopped in the middle of the road and tried to figure out which house was Party Central, two more cars passed us and parked. A boy looked out from the front door of a house and then ran to the car ahead of us, telling the driver something and gesturing down the street.
“That’s him,” I told Hubs. “That’s Sterling. He wants people to park in front of another house, so the cops won’t know where the party’s at.” I snorted. Suddenly, Sterling turned and began running toward our SUV.
“Back up, Hubs! Back up!” Hubs sat frozen in disbelief. Visions filled my head of Sterling reaching our window and sounding the, “Parents! Parents!” alarm, of teenagers pouring out of the house in order to point and laugh and take video of us on their cell phones, of our girls’ faces contorted in rage and humiliation…
“BACK UP, FOR GOD’S SAKE!” I screeched. After what seemed like an eternity, Hubs put the car in reverse and floored it while I cowered in the passenger seat and Sterling chased us down. Finally, Hubs came to a cross street and turned the car around. We screeched away, laughing breathlessly.
“What the hell?!” I said. “We were almost busted by a 17-year-old!” We spent the drive home dreaming up alibis for ourselves, and it occurred to me that I was going to have a hard time teaching my girls where to draw the line when clearly I didn’t have a clue how to find that mark myself.
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>Why didn’t you go in?
>You are being featured on Five Star Friday:http://www.fivestarfriday.com/2008/07/five-star-friday-lucky-edition-14.html
>Thanks, Schmutzie!Why didn’t I go in? Because I want to remain on speaking terms with my stepdaughters! I wasn’t there to humiliate them…
>Oh the drive-by! It always frustrated me because you never see your kid and you still just don’t really know anything.
>LOL…the vision of an loaded SUV, being chased backward down the street by a 17 year old parking director is amusing, but what you leave out is how Punky and Bruiser were reacting to the carnival-like ride…But I reckon you’d be mild, compared to me, if I had kids — especially daughters — of that age at that kind of party. I’m the kind that’d walk up, knock, and demand to check out the punch bowl…
>LOL! Hilarious! And definitely one to bookmark when/if my teenage boys reach the party stage.Just for the record? If your girls are coming to you BEFORE hand, you’re doing something right. I hope my boys feel they can do that, too.
>Skunkfeathers, when we finally peeled out of there, Punky shouted, “We’re LEAVING?! WHY?!”
>I could totally picture you yelling and gesturing to Hubs for him to get the heck out of there. Classic.As a teenager who attended such parties are you described, I always knew that I could call my Mom and she would come and get me no questions asked. I also knew that if I ever drove drunk or let someone drive me home that was drunk she would come unglued in ways I could not even imagine. I want to have that same kind of understanding with my boys when they reach that age. Now if it turns into an every weekend sort of thing it might be a different story.
>Uhm. I wouldn’t call driving by exactly “crashing it”.
>In that case, my anonymous friend, I invite you to write your own blog post and call it whatever you’d like! 🙂
>What’s up with anonymous being such a hater? Lame ass. Probably sitting at the computer with nothing on but a retainer for their overbite.Your post was hilarious, the fact that you were almost busted was aweseome.
>What would be hilarious is if ‘Anonymous’ is Sterling. :)Great story….and I hope my girls will be so honest with me.When I was that age, my parents were sooo naive. Being the youngest of three girls, following behind two ‘perfect’ daughters, they just assumed I would follow their footsteps. Um…notsomuch. And my mom was a high school dean. She should have known better!
>I’d be incredibly pleased that my girls told me the truth ( I never did with my parents) but that would then make it difficult for me to allow them to go. I do trust my stepdaughters though so I may eventually give in with the caveat that if they or their driver does cave and decides to drink that they call me for a ride regardless of how angry they know I’ll be.Then of course I’d get them home and beat the tar out of them for betraying my trust and doing something so stupid.ok well maybe that’s a little extreme 😉
>Wow. I just didn’t think driving up a street in the middle of the night with my young children strapped in their carseats, viewing a bunch of cars and then peeling out of there “crashing a party”.
>Wow. I’m loving the drive-by concept–I guess I’m a little warped. But you’re right–you can never, ever get busted. I can’t even imagine how (much more) scarred for life I would have been had I caught my mom on the prowl at one of my high school parties. Ouch.Sigh…just something else to tack on to the list of coming attractions I’ve started for my four year-old.
>My parents never cared much about the drinking (the drinking age was 18 back then) but they cared very very deeply about the driving drunk or being in a car with a drunk driver. We could call them anytime for a ride, no repercussions – though probably lots of complaining about the late hour. My parents knew everyone. They never had to threaten to show up. I’d known from the age of 5, when I was busted played doctor in the woods by a nosey neighbor with binoculars, that my parents would be informed of my every move. I don’t have that option here but I know I will do drive bys and depending on what I see I might go knock on the door.
>Oh God, make it go away. My babies are little now and I can’t imagine sending them out into the great big world of parties and drinking. I’m going to go suck my thumb in the corner now…WAAAAAAA!
>Can I put a link to your blog on my page? I love it and I think my readers (not many) would too!
>I have mixed feelings on letting my kids go to a party where I KNOW the parents won’t be there only b/c I feel like as a parent I should be on their team. But then again I have a few years to figure all that out.As for what you did? Mild compared to my FIL who went and got my SIL at a party (walked in!). He just said, “I have a bad feeling.” and made her go home. She still holds a grudge at 32!
>So did your stepdaughters find out you were there?(Obviously they will now by reading the blog, but before you posted the story?)
>Double kudos – to your mother for instilling good behavior with a hard-coded fallback program of fear, and to you for getting out there to keep up with what your kids were doing. In all my high school party days, I never once recall encountering a concerned parent. And if I know kids at all today (and I don’t), Sterling would’ve probably walked right up, had a pleasant conversation with you, made you feel ridiculous for being concerned about a party at his place, then gone back inside to feed your step-daughters Jack Daniels and meth.Though my parents told me I could always call them to pick me up no matter what, I was pretty sure there’d be hell to pay if I ever did. So I never did. I have about 12 years to figure out how to convince my kids to actually make the call.
>I like the idea of my kids never attending those parties.But, like you, I remember very clearly those dangerous rides home. I remember not being able to tell if I was more afraid of getting in an accident, or getting caught and grounded.
>Great post! I am the kind of mother that would let them go but first you have to understand where I am coming from.As a mother of 5 grown up children-ages 19 to 27, I have lived this whole issue. Because back in my days of being a teenager I was quite the wild child, I was not nieve to think that I could control my children into NOT doing certain things. I raised them to be educated about these choices and the consequences they could lead to…both good and bad. I constantly talked to them about it…plus I was open about my past and the choices I made and what those choices led to. I also spent A LOT of time listening to them. I wanted them to have an open mind and not to choose things such as drinking just because it was cool or to fit in. Each of my kids knew that I trusted them until they did something to break it and then it would be a LONG road back. This also included that they could call me at any time and I would pick them up…that yes, I may be upset with certain things but I would be way more upset if they drove with even 1 drop of alcohol in them or got in a car with someone that had even 1 drop of alcohol in them.I can honestly say, that for the most part I didn’t have problems with my kids. Yes, they drank…but not so much. They went to parties where there was drinking and there were many times that they were the ones driving kids home because they chose not to drink. There were times I was called to tell me they were staying overnight because they had drank. As a parent of course that’s not what I wanted to hear but I would rather of heard the truth then have them sneaking around and end up dead.The thing is, we parents can’t control our children…we can’t make them do things that we ourselves were not able to do…we can teach them differently and guide them to make better choices. That if they are going to make the choice to drink, then to do it responsibily. In the end it comes down to them making choices when we are not there and believe me they have many chances to do things when were not right there.We have to educate and let them go so to speak, so that when they do make bad choices or ones we would rather they didn’t, that they have a safe place to fall…with us there to listen, teach and love them no matter what.
>I got the dreaded call. My son was hit by a drunk driver and our only car was flattened luckily he is ok and his brothers werent with him. I still dont know what to do, I try to pound it in their heads but who knows what they absorb.
>Thank goodness I won’t have to deal with this for another ten years or so. Though I think drive-bys are the way to go. I’m dying laughing over what that boy must’ve thought when you suddenly started flying backwards!
>Oh god, you mean that eventually they get to go parties ON THEIR OWN? I don’t know whether to laugh or cry…
>All I know is that when I want to reminisce about all of the High school drunk fests I went too, I buy a bottle or two of Boone’s Farm. And my mom would always act as if she was sitting in the trees wearing camouflage. Also, one of my best friend’s mothers really did bust into a party once. it got ugly.
>I think it’s awesome that your girls talked to you about it and were honest. It sounds like they have pretty good heads on their shoulders. As much as it stinks to let them go out on their own..I guess sometimes we have to. I can say this now because my oldest is only 10. 😉
>so we know who will be driving the spymobile next time right???ps i’m totally filing this away for 10 years from now when my kids are in highschool! of course their dad IS a highschool math teacher so that’ll be a BIG help 🙂
>I totally know the feeling of the sudden parent appearance guilt and paranoia. Stupidly, I still had it when I moved out, was living with my now husband, and lived several cities away from my parents. I always thought they would show up at my job to “visit” and I would be up to no good….I also think it’s great your step daughters came to you. I think it’s great you let them go. I think it’s great that parents can figure out where random kids live in order to check up on their own kids. While some may call that creepy and weird, I call that darn fine parenting and I can’t wait til my boy is a teenager so I too can be Nancy Drew with a laptop!
>As a parent of a 18 year old son, and a former “wild child”, I understand your angst!My mother was either terribly naive or didn’t care (never figured out which) and by the grace of God I didn’t end up in a ditch somewhere. With THAT background I constanted talk, talk talk to my son about alcohol, drinking and driving and bad decisions causing a lifetime of pain and heartache. I don’t lecture (I think), I explain (I hope!) my reasons for being responsible. I think they have sunk in and I think today I will talk to him about the “ride home, no questions asked” because that will just be one more security measure.
>My mom was the one that would show up–she did bust a party–kids jumping out of windows everywhere. In retrospect I’m grateful to her.We follow up also. Just to make sure they’re where they say they are. They’ve always had a fairly early curfew and they have to wake us up and pass the smell and conversation test. It’s probably harder on us than it is on them–we’re old and need our sleep.If I did suspect my kids were at a party with no parents, I’d probably cruise by and check it out. I wouldn’t hesitate to call the police if it looked like there was underage drinking going on or an out-of-control party. Better to get scared and slightly busted than to get away with it and get killed on the way home.
>Hahaha! That story seriously cracked me up. As far as letting them go, I would say you definitely did the right thing. As a very young mom, I’m really close to understanding both sides! It was only a few years ago that I had to think about the options: tell my mom where I am and risk her showing up/calling people I’m with/not letting me go, or lie. I (almost) always told her where I was going, and I don’t regret that decision. It was because she trusted me, though, that she always let me go. I hope I’m the same way with my son. Granted, it’s definitely different with a boy than a girl. But still. I hope that we have a relationship where he can trust me (and I him!) enough to tell me where he is, what is going on there. And, quite frankly, if he’s going to be drinking, especially underage, I want to know. Again, hilarious story!
>My kids both told me about a big party in town. I refused to let them go. My son made “other plans” to go over to his friend’s house for a sleepover. Being the untrusting mom I am, I called said friend. First call he was “in the bathroom.” Then I called the cell which went to voicemail. Then I called friend’s home phone, and son was “going to the store to get something to eat.” It was a bit TOO suspicious. Then another Mom called me, asking me where her daughter was. She had told her mom she was at my house. Her mom and I put two and two together. She volunteered to do the drive of shame.She got to the kid’s house and found my son DEAD DRUNK on the front lawn. Her daughter was drunk as well. She drove him home and he walked in so freaking drunk I just let him go upstairs and sleep it off. The next morning was pleasant. He finally woke up, came downstairs, I informed him how totally and completely grounded he was, he took it like a man and didn’t even argue, and then we moved on.But that didn’t stop him from having a party at OUR house the first weekend I ever left them. I mean 15 years I’ve NEVER left them, but I went for a weekend and had them all settled at friend’s houses, and the kid has a freaking party at our house and puts the photos up on Facebook. SO busted. HOpefully we’re beyond the party stage. Hopefully!
>Hilarious. And I loved reading the comments on this one!
>i’ve been reading your blog for years now. i think you should stop and compare the number of times you try to find reasons to punish your daughters to the number of times you tell them you love them.
>Maybe I don’t write about the number of times I tell them I love them because it’s private… you know? 🙂