The Teen Mom That Wasn’t

As if there weren’t already enough scandals and controversies in Lucindaland…

Like the scandalous habits of my husband, who insists on putting soccer cleats on the table and leaving his dirty underwear on the hallway floor outside the laundry closet, rather than just opening the door and throwing them on the pile of dirty clothes inside (And just who do you think has to pick that underwear up, Hubs?! The Knicker Fairy?!!!).

Then there’s the ongoing controversy over whether 14 is old enough to date (she’s not). After all, she’s not going to do anything (it’s not her I’m worried about), and she’s definitely mature enough (This from the girl I was playing Bratz dolls with a month ago) and insert-a-thousand-other-reasons-here…

Another nightly controversy involves the status of 12’s bedtime. Gone are the days of a dozen hugs and babytalk when the lights go down in her room. Now, our little angel sits rigidly in bed, all crossed arms and thin lips, ready for a fight.

“I am a straight A student. I shouldn’t have to go to bed at 9:30. And 14 doesn’t have a bedtime, so why do I? And I am very responsible and I don’t stay up too late. And mom didn’t care when I went to bed. And (insert-a-thousand-other-reasons-here)…”

Even Baby was the author of her own smelly scandal at the gym… Suffice it to say that as long as she’s in diapers, I live in fear of another public poonami disgrace.

But now that 14 has entered the hallowed halls of high school, another scandal has erupted, one so unexpected and so insidious that it makes all other family scandals seem mild by comparison.

Apparently, I was a teen mother.

Take a moment to collect yourselves. It wasn’t so long ago that I too was reeling from the shock of this information.

The dirty secret came out when Hubs and I went to 14’s open house for parents last Monday night. Since we didn’t really like our neighborhood high school, we had transferred her to another school across town- meaning that for the first time, Parents’ Night meant a room full of complete strangers- strangers who didn’t know us from the grocery store and weren’t our neighbors down the street and didn’t go to our church. As we navigated the hallways between 14’s classrooms, I chalked up the sidelong stares from those around us to my husband’s television job. That and the fact that I was wearing a really great pair of Kenneth David wedges. Little did I know the conversations that were taking place behind my back.

“You know Mrs. Markham, my English teacher?” 14 said the next day after school.

“Yeah, I talked to her last night,” I replied.

“Well, she told me that after you and Dad left her classroom, one of the other parents came up to her and said, ‘What is she, like 21?!”

“What?!” I said, stunned and slightly pleased.

“Then at soccer practice, this girl asked me how old you were. I told her you were thirty and she said she’d thought you were like, 23 or something!”

“23…” I said dazedly with a goofy smile on my face. Wow. So I don’t look like I’m thirty after all… Maybe I could do one of those Oil of Olay ads… Yeah, I bet those pay a lot and…

“And they both think you’re my MOM!”

I came crashing back down to earth. “Your mom?! Well, you told them I’m your stepmom, right!”

“No! It was too embarrassing!”

Omigod. Omigod. Omigod. I quickly did the calculations in my head. That would mean they thought I had 14 when I was… 7 YEARS OLD??!! Surely they added a few years… 12?! 13?! And obviously, I’m married to 14’s father, who is very decidedly in his early 40s. The pervy scenario was too much to even contemplate.

“14!!!!!!!” I screeched.

“I know,” she moaned.

The thing is, 14 and I do look a lot alike. Same hair, same face shape, same big eyes… We’re sometimes mistaken for sisters- and there was that one time at a McDonald’s drive through window, when the cashier said, “Damn, you is a young mommy!” But he was a white boy with cornrows, so what could he possibly know (apologies to all my white-boy-with-cornrows-readers out there.)?

But man-oh-man, I had worked so hard not to be a teen mom… All those boys I fended off (well truthfully, there’s very little that’s grosser than a teen boy pawing at you), all those back bedrooms I avoided at parties, all those frat boys I refused to follow upstairs for “some kick-ass hunch punch”. All the teasing, the pleading, the manipulation, the second-dateless nights I endured in order not to become another statistic…

And now, at 30, it turns out that– at least at first glance– I smack of teen momness.

Of course, there’s a silver lining. I was so consumed with my career that I pretty much skipped my twenties, anyway… While my college friends were coming into work at 10am with hangovers and yesterday’s outfit on, I was in at work by 3am wearing pantyhose, a cheesy “bright suit” and a helmet head ‘do, making happy talk on the hicktown airwaves.

So I guess I’ve reversed decades. I looked like I was in my thirties when I was in my twenties.. Now, with my hair back to its normal long length and my new work wardrobe of blue jeans and a t-shirt, I look like I’m in my twenties. By the time I’m 40, I’ll have the whole matter straightened out.

But it looks like I’m gonna have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do at the next PTA meeting. Maybe I should just have a t-shirt made that says “30-year-old STEPmothers ROCK!”