Date: April 5, 2007
To: Surly Teenage Boys
From: The Straggly-Haired Pear-Shaped Heterosexual 30-Something Schlumpy Lady with the Glasses Who Drives the Dented Green Car with Britax Car Seats and WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER and GOD BLESS THE WHOLE WORLD NO EXCEPTIONS Bumper Stickers
Re: Take my word for it
__________________________________________________
Teenage Boys: Stop with the surly. You have nothing to be surly about yet. Yes, pimples suck. Yes, homework sucks. Yes, wanking with your mom’s Skin-So-Soft is not the same thing as doing it in the back of a rebuilt ’78 Mustang with Jessica Alba.
But your parents give you a room with a bedroom door and they let you keep that door AND keep it closed. They let you have in that room GameBoys and Wiis and Xboxes and other things my aging brain files under the “ATARI” category. They let you hide out for endless hours in that stanky room with those things and they let you slam that door they let you keep. I am here to tell you that this would not be so at my house, because Ma Ingalls here would never put up with that kind of crap.
Aside from school, you are blessed with nearly unlimited freetime and very limited responsibilities. Yet you are surly. You are surly when you load my groceries into my cart. You are surly when I have to ask you to wait so I can find out whether or not Sophie wants chocolate milk or apple juice with her Unhappy Meal. You are surly when I finally pull up to the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through for my whole-milk latte with Splenda and I am not half as cute as my voice was through the speaker.
Let me tell you something, Surly Teenage Boys. Surly becomes a bad, bad, hard-to-beat habit, and it’s not going to help you get laid, either. At the very least, it’s not going to help you get laid well. I know right now you think that any sex is great sex, but you’d be surprised how far a good attitude goes in that department. Mumbling oh baby you know you want it in what you think is a sexy, tough guy voice? Is. Not. Hot. Look up ‘foreplay’ if you need to. Read a few interviews with Sting and Trudie Styler.
Better yet, just work on eye contact. Bonus tip: Sex is better if you’re not ashamed to look the other person in the face. Sex does not preclude smiling. ‘Preclude’ is a good SAT word. Look that up too. I’m trying to help you here. Our two demographics tend to be polar opposites, so consider this an outreach memo.
Surprise yourself. Surprise me and the other pear-shaped women of the world. Pull up your pants. Better yet, buy pants that fit. Scrap the Jay-Z cap. Borrow a tie for absolutely no reason and wear it like You Da Man. Because it’s that frickin’ simple. You Da Man, and not Da Boy, if you carry yourself with respect and treat other people with respect and LOOK PEOPLE IN THE EYE and STOP SHOWING YOUR BUTT CRACK. You could wear your grandmother’s lace doily on your head and no shirt and lederhosen with patent leather stilettos, and if you treated people well and dropped the surly act, you would STILL be Da Man, and you would get Da Girls. And I would like you too, although I would worry about your nipple ring getting caught in your lederhosen suspenders.
Look all people in the eye, even the haggard mother-types. Women like me, the ones who buy baby wipes and supersize tampons and organic milk and a guilty 24-inch Slim Jim and Us Weekly? We remember you. We remember you well. Not you in particular, but we remember how those of your age and species treated us at an early and difficult age, and it mattered. It mattered more than you knew at the time, more than we knew at the time. What you do now, how you treat the young women in your life after your shift at Big Y? I am here to tell you that it matters very much.
Be good to the girls. Not for what you want from them. Because bedroom door or no bedroom door, this whole time sucks bad for them too. Sucks worse, because they’re the ones who bear the visible brunt of young love gone bad and gone unhappily fertile. They’re the ones who wear the terms slut and whore and that c-word that you and I both know, while the guys who manhandle them just yank up their pants, readjust their caps and slink away smirking.
I’m not saying you’ve done this, not yet, but watch your mouth and expect more from yourself. It’s always been easier to ruin a girl than a guy. That kind of damage clings to a girl in ways you don’t know, in ways you don’t ever want to know. Women turn out strong because they’d die if they didn’t.
I’ve got girls. I’d rather you kept your paws off them. I’d rather they loved other girls. But they tell me they like boys like you, so I have no choice but to write you this memo.
Love girls well. Love them honestly. Or don’t love them. And tell them that, gently but assertively. Then walk away, never once talking trash about them. It’s pretty simple: If you don’t love them, don’t stick your boy parts into their girl parts. Be better than that.
If you do love them, great. Then keep your hands off them for longer than you think you can bear it. Keep your hands off them until they put their hands on you. Keep your hands off them for a full week after that too, if you can, and hear where they’re coming from. Listen hard. Because they are on your team. Although without this memo from me, it might have taken you another fifty years and two divorces to figure that out.
Snort if you want, disbelieve if you want, but I know exactly what your penis looks like under your Big Y or Burger King pants. Every pear-shaped mother whose groceries you bag? She knows too. And if she smiles slightly and sadly after she says thanks and you just grunt at the floor, that’s what she’s smiling about. Your penis, and how it rules your life these days.
Don’t get pissed off. Maybe you think you have a terrific penis. Maybe you think you don’t. Maybe you’ve read my post on Ron Black, his adult penis, and the Extender. If you haven’t, read it. Because the point is the same: Women, young or old, pear-shaped, apple-shaped, or brick shithouse-shaped, care much less about your penis than they do about your eyes or your mouth or your hands, and what they say.
What you can do with your penis and what comes out of your penis is just not all that impressive to us. You can do a great shadow-puppet snake act? Terrific. Lift a car with it? Excellent, dude. Get something up on YouTube, stat.
Please know this beyond a shadow of a doubt: Straight girls of all ages are just amused by your penis. Even when we seem to be actively enjoying your penis, we are still amused by your penis. The male member is a funny thing, and it’s even funnier that Freud was dead serious about his beloved theory of penis envy.
Penis envy is something that happens in sidewise glances in a men’s locker room or a men’s restroom, as far as we XX-chromosomed can figure out. There is penis pity, but Freud was too busy sweating and Gestalting in a back room to admit it to himself. It would have killed him.
We don’t care much about your penis and what you do with it, as long as you use it with respect in our presence, or disrespect it to a bloody pulp alone behind your bedroom door. We women DO care a lot about what you do with your eyes, your mouth, your hands. Young women are trying to convince themselves that they don’t care that much about anything, because then the disappointment when you treat them badly is not as acute. So maybe this is news to you. Good. Straight-talking news sources are hard to come by. Trust me.
I will say it again: Surprise them. Surprise the world, yourself, and that naked girl you’ve snuck into your bedroom after school, with great kindness. Kindness is all. Kindness to the naked hotties who will come your way, and kindness to the bundled, exhausted mother-types you barely seem to notice, even when they ask you for two fives and five ones instead of a ten and a five. At this point in our lives, we exhausted mother-types know a lot about sex, and we know a lot about kindness. Kindness is more surprising.
Do not forget: You’re here on this earth because someone had sex, or had a lot of sex that didn’t work, procreatively speaking, so they whipped up your ass in a test tube. But I guaranfrickintee you that sex was involved in some way.
I am no longer as cute as my voice. But I am a force to be reckoned with, particularly if you decide some day that you love one of my daughters. I can tell you right now that I will see it all, that I can see into you, that I will know from your eyes what kind of person you are, or are trying to be. I’ll know too if you’re not trying at all.
So I’m begging you. Start now. Throw surly to the wind. Look at me. I’ll look at you. Let’s smile at each other. I won’t look down at your penis, but we’ll both know it’s there. You’ll know I have a hoo-hoo, because one of my daughters will have fallen headfirst into the cart, and when you help her out, you’ll see she looks just like me. She’s too young for you, but there is someone out there right now who isn’t, and she’s thinking about you.
I know your options. I care about your options.
Rise to the occasion. Make it a habit. There’s a reason the nerdy dudes seem to get the hot chicks later in life. They figure it out early, have more time to practice. Or they’re stinkin’ rich. That’s the chick’s issue; I’ll address that later. Right now I’m talking to you.
Surliness sucks. Kindness rocks. Using girls sucks. Appreciating girls rocks.
I’m watching you. Watch me back. Take a good look at me as I wipe my whining kid’s nose and fumble for my car keys. If you love a girl for the long haul, this is what you’ll get. Someone like me. Someone like your mother.
Try not to recoil. Let it sink in. Because this is the start of recognizing that beauty runs a lot deeper than all of us can see, especially in our crappy surly early years. Since we’re speaking of surprise: Real beauty is fabulously surprising. The sooner you train yourself to look for it (not just the glossy enameled variety), the better.
Meet my eyes and I’ll meet yours. I promise to look harder for your beauty too, even the beauty you don’t know you have yet.
And maybe someday we’ll even have a good laugh over this after Thanksgiving dinner.
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Yeah, it’s a terrifying slog either way, completely…sons or daughters. I hear you loud and clear. Could not agree more.
Look, I missed out on Level One teen heartbreak myself (not being asked to dance) and rocketed to Level Four heartbreak (too graphic, too brutal, too much for a comments section or my mother’s heart) before I was 16. I would have given both arms and my firstborn to have had a soda-shop date, c. 1950—a “date” (the word was laughable at the time) that wouldn’t have cost me what I assumed all of us girls at the time were paying to play.
Since 16, I’ve been working backwards. Anyone else? Working my way back down to Level One heartbreak and innocence and gentleness and soda-shop romance and replacing the hefty pieces of self-worth that got gouged out early on. I’d love for my daughters (and for your sons) to head off to college a lot less effed up than I was. Not sure how we all help that to happen, but I think about it every day, and I am listening.
There aren’t many men commenting on this so I’ll add that this was hilarious and so true. I’m not necessarily speaking for myself but I’m guilty of being rude at girls when I was a teenager in the past. Never rude in a physical hands-down-your-pants way of course but rude nonetheless like not looking in the eyes and things like that. Classic post.
Dear Jenn,
I wish that I could express my inner fire as eloquently as your’s shines through. I am a local fan and have been quietly reading for months. Our children attend the same school, but my two are much older than yours which is probably why our paths don’t cross. Your writing is enjoyable, inspiring and thought-provoking. In fact, this post inspired me to comment finally. I have a son and a daughter. My son will be thirteen soon and already I see hints of occasional surlyness-mostly when he is tired or frustrated. However, I “fight tooth and nail” for respect and human kindness to ultimately triumph. I pray to the higher powers that having one child of each gender will help guide the other in their quest for understanding and respect of the opposite sex. Experiencing each other’s angst can’t be a bad thing, right? My kids are great, but I know that we are in for a bit of a ride as the teenage years approach. I hope that your book gets published and that there are more plays in the near future, but regardless I will continue to quietly read and enjoy your posts. Thanks for sharing your self.
Totally awesome post. Wander on over and ask him how often he lost his bedroom door!
ATTN: Middle-aged Women
From: The Teenaged Boys of the World.
Please do not deride us based on stereotypes which are entirely speculative on your part. You have never been a boy, and most of you are not the parents of any teenage boys. We’re sorry if many of us are not chipper and gushing to the customers while we are working our degrading minimum wage jobs. You see, we don’t really get paid enough to care. If we get fired from one boring, life-sucking job, we can generally get another one within a day or two, so we really just don’t have a lot of incentive to pretend to be excited about bagging groceries or filling your fast food order. People who have worked these jobs understand this. NOBODY *wants* to be doing that kind of work. The customers often treat you like dirt, and generally give you a million reasons a day to hate them. So, maybe we’re being selfish by not swallowing our true feelings and going out of our way to brighten your day, but hey, I’m sure you’ll be treated better someplace where they charge you a lot more and pay their employees a lot more.
As for our interaction with the girls: well, you know the saying “Nice guys finish last”? I’m sure in your middle-aged minds you think the most appealing guy on campus is the polite, honor student, Eagle Scout… but in reality, the guys that get the girls are generally the biggest jerks. Demand drives supply, right?
Your perception that the guys are out their prowling for innocent young things to deflower is straight out of the musical “Grease”, but in reality, the girls tend to be the more sexually aggressive ones these days. The pressure to have sex is coming from the girls. The girls are setting their sights on guys, pursuing them, and driving the relationships to grossly premature levels because they believe that’s what is required to be cool and on par with their girlfriends. They “use” guys to perpetuate their own emotional- masturbatory fantasies, and they exploit them as social trophies.
So, you know, maybe you could cut us a little slack. We get demonized quite enough, thanks. Schools cut away things that appeal to us, as so more of us lose interest in schools. Colleges are openly hostile to us in many cases, so we’re not going to college nearly as often as you girls are. Our life prospects are to grow-up, get drawn into a relationship, and work at low paying jobs we hate to enable our “better halves” the freedom to work or not, as they choose, to stay home with the kids or chase after that dream job, without having to bear the daily burden of bringing home the money to pay the bills.
Or maybe we’ll join the army to go fight to keep the nation safe, or fight contrived wars as the case may be. If we die… hey, just culling the herd. If 14 men and 1 woman get taken prisoner by some Middle Eastern crackpots, hey, guess who the media cares about? Whose life and experience is clearly the most valued?
You want to change how we interact with you, maybe you should start by not demonstrating such a low opinion of us. We pick up on that.
working my way backwards indeed…yes.
That’s why it’s so important. That’s why this letter matters and the one for the boys on the other side. It’s also why being a parent is going to suck so bad later. I used to think that I couldn’t wait for the next stage of my child’s development because (silly me) I thought the current one was the “flawed” one. I was waiting until the baby could voice her/his needs. Then I was waiting for her/him to learn a word other than “no”. Then I was waiting for them to learn to enjoy time with other people. Then it was learning to dress themselves and so on. It took me long enough but what I figured out was that each stage has it’s sucky parts that can break your heart but there are also chances to bond and learn.
It’s so much harder than I imagined. And though the hits keep coming so do the chances to truly connect with these miraculous human beings I was lucky enough to gestate.
Looks like you hit a few nerves . . .
Mine, too, though the comments nerved me up more than your post even did.
Everybody here has got something right. You can see, if nothing else, how emotional people get even TALKING about teenagers. It’s such a painful era, and it seems to last forever. Sometimes at a chipper 28 years I feel like I’m still emerging from the fog of teenageism.
My brother’s a teenager. He’s sweet to his mama and to disabled kids and calls his grown sisters at least ONCE a year, but I’ve also seen him be quite a jackass to girls, and to weaker boys, in front of friends he was desperate to impress. I and my next sister (he has four sisters, but that’s a different post) pulled him aside and gave him a talk like this. I hope one day in, I don’t know, a decade or so, he’ll pull us aside and say thanks, that helped me make some good choices.
My sister’s a teenager, too. She calls us a lot more and is sickeningly sweet to boys, but treats our mom like crap and passes out sass to her teachers sometimes. She’s getting her own talk here pretty soon. Something along the same lines. The difference is – boys are physically stronger. And that changes everything. Take it from a once-abused woman who knows. Teach the boys to be gentler. Teach the girls to be tougher.
So . . . what? Point? I don’t have one. You hit a nerve. Thanks. Thanks for getting me all riled up and thinking.
This is so excellent because Bossy long ago noticed that boys equate surly with cool. Surly is NOT cool. Now Bossy needs a stiff drink to make her forget all the juvenile penis talk.
Jenn,
May I keep this? May I steal it shamelessly from you and print it out and horde it in a special place, so that when my darling 6 year old boy begins to grow his first surly, I may pass it on to him? And so that when my sweet, sassy little 2 1/2 year old begins to attract the boys, and thus, the surly, I may press it into each of her potential suitors sweaty palms?
G,
It seems there are finally some physically strong female role models in the movies- unfortunately there is still too much emphasis on T & A. We need to see more physically strong and capable females rationally clothed in lead roles.
I still remember being told all through junior and high school, ‘These are the best years of your life!’
HA! Depends. Being a teenager mostly sucked.
It took until 30 to get over some of it!
WOW!! Copies will be sent to my sons(21&26) and to my daughter(16) Maybe even to my daughter’s boyfriend’s mom. This has got to be one of your very best postings/public service announcements EVER.
I’m married now for going on 12 years and in the same committed relationship for 16, but based on my college years and shortly thereafter, I believe I can say that every young woman I grew close to considered herself fundamentally damaged at some point in the past by something a boy, or young man, or her father did. I vowed never to become that man in my relationships, and despite that it is one of the hardest commitments I have ever made. Cause no matter how self aware we are and how we work at things, we’ve all got baggage and we all have work to do.
My mom sent me this link and told me not to be turned off by the length. Not only am i not turned off, I am enlightened. As a 16 year old girl, I wish that all boys my age somehow get this memo. I put the link to this on my facebook (a public, online profile) and wrote that all boys MUST read it. If only I could make my crush read it!
This may be the single greatest thing I ever read from you. Absolutely amazing. I have to bookmark it, print it, and then staple it to the forehead of every surly teen in the hood.
So funny. Love your writing!
Well said Spot, those who are tripping over themselves to print out Jenn’s post should include comment #56 as well.
Bravo! If I had boys I would make them read this!!!
KP
Teenage girls can be just as surly and disrespectiful as teenage boys.
Sounds like you’re mad at the world for beind a middle-aged pear-shaped mom.
EXACTLY.
Thank you. Now…how can we arrange for 10,000 of these to be dropped from a plane over some sort of sports arena?
Here I sit, 3,000 miles away in my grown son’s house, reading an entry that I know was slowly taking root for months, years. The irony is that now I am working with aforementioned teenage boys (and girls) and will get to witness “the dance” up close. So far, though, I have seen kids who seem not so much surly but scared of what is on the horizon, thus the bravado and macho poses.
I apologize, Jenn, for missing the clues when you were growing up. Being an only child born late into a somewhat more innocent generation, I was naive about “the dance”. I grew up thinking that kids would be kids but all would sort itself out. I had a rather monogamous relationship with one grade/high school steady. Sex did not rear its ugly head. We went bowling. Instead of the “underwear books” I gave you and your brother, I should have picked up on the pressures of your generation.
You are honest here, painfully so. This is an excellent article and forces me to think about my grandchildren’s future, boy and girls. I will respond in blog form soon.
In the meantime, I am looking forward to your Letter to Teenage Girls.
As many have said here, both sides of the equation need to be addressed. How can our girls send messages which command respect and kindness? How can they not be victims or too assertive in their demands? Who are the role models? Sadly, peer pressure is an equal-opportunity employer.
How do we teach all our children to r-e-s-p-e-c-t themselves and others?
I wish the boys would listen to you. I hate to say it because you are so funny but they are surly because masculinity kind of sucks in certain ways, for certain boys.
I fail to to recognize the miracle here.
Is it really a wonder that this piece would come from a female?
It is the embodiment of the female agenda in the form of the written word.
A male of equal wit and literary skill could fashion a diatribe from the perspective of the male agenda.
Males and females are different, both genders have interests exclusive to their biochemistry. All the entitlement-minded scripts from overweight western women will never change nature.
Thank goodness.
Brilliant! And I must say, I laughed so hard my teenagers came over to read, and they agreed!
I love it. If I knew any teenaged boys, I’d send them right here. But maybe I’ll send the men who still seem to be stuck there…
I think you make some excellent points and I appreciate your ability to express yourself so well, but the post does seem a little angry. Perhaps it’s justified, as I haven’t walked in your shoes. I don’t encounter too many surly young males, and the ones I do come across don’t warrant any kind of emotion or response from me. Maybe I’m just too tired to bother, or maybe I figure (hope and pray) that they will someday grow up. Sometimes getting upset is just the thing that makes their day.
“How do we teach all our children to r-e-s-p-e-c-t themselves and others? ”
By respecting others ourselves, and letting our kids see that….and by treating our children with respect, and making our expectations for their behavior clear,…AND by making sure they respect themselves.
I see the way my son (17 next week) interacts with people – he is confident and friendly. I am often told that he “had great manners”, “is so polite” and “shakes hands” as if these things are unusual. Thye aren’t- I am certain, because I see that his friends are friendly, gracious, articulate young men….they don’t do surly, they keep their pants up, and they are equally friendly with girls from their clique. They were nice boys at 10, they are at 17, and I am absolutely confident that they will continue through life as men we are proud of.
I hope (and expect) that my daughters (8 and 14) emulate their brother’s attitude, and that as a result they attract (and are attracted to) fine men like their dad and brother.
Well! People are talking….I hear t’ings…first of all, I am fairly well-adjusted (PAH!) and still, the surly teenage boys scare me! The poo comment really struck home. But I must add that I can see beyond the oily, Eddie Haskel types as well. For the most part, the teenaged boys I see are actually nice and funny. Thee best one lives next door. He’s kind to children, can fix any bike, and has the usual teenage conflicts. As to Spot’s letter, true, we XXs can never know what it is like to be a teenage boy, so it’s good to hear from one. And also, I do see the teenaged girls being so sexually aggressive, much to their detriment. And it scares me. It’s up to me to steer Biba through these choppy waters. (Oh dear, I am starting ramble) At any rate, my point is that there were very many thoughtful comments to a very thoughtful post. I’d like to hear more from all points of view.I am truly impressed by the calibre of the comments. Good job!
“All the entitlement-minded scripts from overweight western women will never change nature.”
damn western women. That’s what happens when you educate them, they start getting bossy.
The omission of a “please behave better” letter to girls does not change the validity of this missive. Everybody could use one of these – not just teenagers, grown ups too. Five year olds. Cats. But this one is addressed to teenaged boys. An urge to kindness? to self control? to look people in the eye and smile? Where is the controversy here? If you are a teenager who already does these nice things, fine! This letter is not for you.
I commented on this already above, but I keep thinking about it, checking back on additional comments. It’s a good piece, because it got people thinking, arguing. Thank you, Jenn and commenters, for stimulating this western woman’s brain.
I don’t think I’ve EVER read a comments sections as interesting as this one, which is a testament to your wonderful writing, Jenn.
Spot’s comment was worth reading.
I don’t know what the answers are. Is it a cop-out for me to say that being a teenager, male or female, is really a form of mental illness? All those hormones, and brains not prepared for the onslaught. It is a damn shame that the hormones show up in such numbers before the brain has finished its growth.
And Mater, I’m sighing here, because moms never know everything. And I’m sad in anticipation of the time when one of my own boys will be hurting, and I won’t know. It breaks my heart, even the idea of it.
There has been an interesting shift in the behavior of teenaged girls as they have been allowed to express themselves more honestly and fully. I don’t think we are seeing the best of teenaged girls right now, not by a long shot. I think they’re a bit heady with their recently acknowledged power.
I am afraid for my boys’ teen years, both for my boys being hurt and for the girls they will no doubt hurt. I guess what I’m trying to say is they are ALL hurting, and the only thing that differs according to gender is how they show or don’t show it.
I am printing this out and giving it to surly!
Umm…really good comments, and yes, Spot’s comment is, as always, a great response to post (I always have more in common with Spot than I ever would have expected back in the day when he was lampooning the Birkenstocks I so desperately wanted)…kindness can start here, after all.
But, um, I’m a little stuck on comment #74 and the “embodiment of the female agenda in the form of the written word….” Because, as far as I can tell here, the female agenda behind THIS entitlement-minded script from THIS overweight western women is, um…
…”meet my eye.”
Which, as an agenda, seems not so terribly wrong. But, then again, I am an overweight western woman. So what the hell do I know.
O, Jenn. This post is staggeringly well-written. It’s bold and impassioned and it no small part true. But I am a woman (though not a mother) around your same age and as I remember it, I had little use for the nice, respectful boys when I was a teenager. Oh, I was nice to them alright (I’m nothing if not nice) but it was the surly ones I wanted. Like almost every girl that age (you can’t tell me this is not true of you too), I was certain that only my pure teenaged lurve would break thru the tough dangerous exterior to the soft poetic center and the desire to be THE ONE who uncovered the artist lurking under the hoodie and the scowl was all consuming and reinforced by just about every teen movie/teen book/teen romance going.
Fortunately for me, the dangerous boys I encountered just turned out to be dull and vacant. And I eventually discovered that kind boys were the way to go. I married a kind boy, but of course. He is all things you would want for your daughters, I’m certain (except maybe rich)… but I can tell you this for sure: As a teenager you would have mistaken him for surly. He would not have met your gaze, he would have mumbled, he would have looked anywhere other than directly at you. Because sometimes the ones that appear to be surly? The ones that scare the shit out of you and make poo slide down your leg? Sometimes they are more scared of you. scared you might notice them, scared you might not and if they aren’t scared of you? Let me assure you, they are terrified of your daughters.
Your girls are incredible. I’m certain they will continue to be incredible under your tender, watchful eye. You are a specacular mother. And I sincerely hope that what I’m about to say won’t apply to them as they negotiate adolescent hell…
But it wasn’t the boys (surly or otherwise) who bruised and battered my teenaged spirit … it was the girls.
This is true with girls as well having had been one of them surly teen girls… only surly wasn’t the descriptive word used. Black hair, eyeliner and nails, I was Mansons underage wet dream. This, as gender specific as it reads, applies to both sexes. And it is something I shall force mine to read, the girl and the boys.
But reading comment 74, wow…. just a big fat wow. Especially when one hops over to his site and reads it. A written guide to be everything that this post describes, only written by what is presumed to be a supposedly adult male. My worst nightmare for my own sons to be. The old saying is true I suppose, if one talks long enough, any action is justified. Even his in his own warped world.
I’m showing this to my son in several years when he shows his first signs of surly.
Gah! I just remembered that, in the 50s, surly was sexy = James Dean. The scowl, the slouch, the lazy eyes … the rebel without a cause. His jeans fit much better though.
Bad boys and good girls. My generation promoted Doris Day and Sandra Dee and Annette. They mostly kept their clothes on and looked perky.
I do hope my grandgirls do the same.
http://littlebalddoctors.wordpress.com/2007/04/09/to-the-fairer-sex/
My own letter as the mother of a little boy.
THANK YOU. I loved this and forwarded it to friends and family. I love your blog and can’t get enough.
Fantastic post–reminded me of the surly bagger boy who also gave me a guilt trip for not purchasing an Easter Seal…
I agree with people who said both boys and girls can be cruel and that we all know perfect gems of teenagers and their classmates who are diamonds in the rough.
My favorite part: “Gestalting in a back room”!
I think everyone can stand to be reminded that the cute perky girl you lust after will always one day be caught sans shower and possibly even sans brushed teeth but still feeling hot because she’s wearing clean clothes. Maybe we can all try to still see the cute perky girl inside…wouldn’t that be fine.
Oh, also, little tip for any teenage surly girls out there, don’t date the ones that won’t look you in the eye…ever. And try to remember that your mom, be she pear shaped and sans shower or not, loves you more than you can imagine and wants the best of life and love for you. Maybe give her a hug for no reason.
LOVE this post! I have 5 nephews and 2 step nephews betwen the ages of 15 and 19, more younger and older too. I want to print this, laminate it and put it up in their bedrooms! Like another commenter sad, it should be on a pamphlet and taught in sex-ed or something, LOVE IT!!
As an adult male, I disagree with Spot. With increasing equality, there is still one area of leverage boys have over girls and it is the reason they are more often sent into wars, namely, their physical strength. Respect for girls of every age, shape, and overactive bowel disorder is the primary tool to keep everyone safe and sane.
Jenn, I hope you will develop a curriculum for all 4th grade boys on respecting girls (with a refresher in grade 7). As the father of a male 3rd grader, I hope you get it ready before the fall.
OMG – you’ve met my 13 year old son. I didn’t know you lived in Kentucky!!!!
I’d commented on your post early on but when checking back to keep up on everyone else’s comments I realized the ether apparently ate my comment for breakfast (or I pushed a wrong button). I just had to chime in and reiterate that this is such an outstanding bit of writing, absolutely my favorite of all your posts, and I’m recommending it to everyone everyone everyone!
Thanks.
I found your blog via Mommybear. What an excellent post! Could you please come over and recite that when The Princess begins dating!
I am very impressed with your blog. I will certainly have to come back and visit!
WELL DONE!
I don’t know how I missed this one before. Wow. Your ability to get into others heads and then write wonderfully never ceases to amaze me!
Wow. Amazing. Just what we need – another know-it-all in the world. What exactly are you trying to get at in this..thing you wrote? That you know what younger boy’s penis’ look like? Well, congratulations. I know too, but that doesn’t mean that I know everything about what is wrong with kids today. Behind every face is a story, most of which you don’t know, and just because a boy is younger, doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a reason to be angry. And you know what? They know what your frumpy old vagina looks like too, it’s called “porno” and they can find a picture of a younger version of yours anywhere on the net. It’s amazing how some people think that because they got knocked up or had a few extra birthdays, that they know all there is to know and that anyone with a birthdate after yours is an idiot and you should rule supreme. You know what I think? I think you need to get over yourself and face the reality that other people have problems too. Just because someone is angry, doesn’t mean they’re a drama queen, or their “surly”. Did you go to dictionary.com just to look up that cool word? That’s just awesome. I guess it means that if anyone besides yourself has a problem it doesn’t compare to yours, and you probably aren’t a very sympathetic ear, either. You sound like one of those kind of people who, whenever someone needs to let off some steam and says, “Man…I had a crappy day,” your first reply is “Oh yeah? Well you should hear how crappy MY day was”.
Seriously…..get over yourself.
Good grief Tryniti has swallowed a grumpy pill. I reckon the surly commenter has arrived. I thought your piece was beautiful and this person is clearly doolally.
Wow– this is amazing. Amazingly precise and insightful.
It goes both ways. How boys are treated by girls at that sensitive, impressionable, uncertain age carries a lot of effect, too.
Sexual relations are a centrally important, and therefore very vulnerable, area of life at that age. Kids do hurt each other. A lot of it comes out of defensiveness, ignorance, and lack of empathy. Most people become better with age, but at the time, puberty is tough.
I can accept that it helps the girls for the boys to be kind. It helps the boys if the girls are kind, too. I hope you as a mom can treat these “surly” boys with some kindness as well, and teach your daughters to do the same.
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