Regarding the 21 year olds in the details, that type of restriction is FAR too much.
My nephew was closely monitored. But there are things like apps that say they are a game or calculator, that are actually social media networks and they are basically completely uncensored. They can watch pornography, and send naked photos to one another. You name it.
I highly doubt, those kids are as clean, as their parents believe.
The girl, probably has an only fans account, and I KNOW the boy is being controlled far more by his hormones than his parents.
I am not speaking for ALL younger people, just what my nephew showed me in his phone, and what he says about kids his age. He’s 23 now, and has a son, with a girl who got pregnant with his child at 17 years old.
He used to be pretty open with me, and I let him feel comfortable talking about things. As most boys around 15–16, he was VERY proud of his sexual exploits. I was not happy with his activities, but at least I knew what he was up to. I just encouraged him NOT to impregnate a under aged girl. Which unfortunately, he did anyway. But. They are very much in love, and his son is a great addition to the world. I think.
I started skipping parts of school at 12. I wasn’t a bad kid, I just had ridiculously terrible teachers, and bullying was an issue. So. I would usually hide in parts of my middle school, and read science fiction novels. Nothing bad, other than I was skipping classes.
My parents were mostly completely unaware of this. Disinterested teachers, I guess never told anyone I wasn’t in class. So, my parents were unaware.
My high-school was less than a mile from my house.
I didn’t start off skipping. But. The school was terrible. Is was built for 800 students, and we had 1,500 kids. They added really shitty trailers for classrooms. The trailers were smaller than the classrooms in the building, that usually had to have about 20 kids sit on the floor. So. The trailers were a crowded mess, and very hot. Tempers flared often, in those conditions and led to fights outside, or on busses.
Teachers often had to just stand helpless in a corner, when fights broke out. We had a police station in the school and several officers. But the gym, could not be locked (fire code,) and had a back door that was always unattended. Drug dealers or friends and family of the students who were in their 20’s would always be in the locker rooms. The boys locker, no shit, was like a prison movie. I had to grow up very fast as a freshman, or I might be the next victim of a 25 on 1 beat down.
I was a kid who liked drawing, and actually had a future in art, and I liked comic books and nerdy stuff. I was tall, but really thin. I was able to avoid most physical altercations, by proving myself playing sports. It was a very primitive atmosphere. We were largely unattended for the long PE classes. Our gym coach, to nobody’s surprise, was eventually jailed for sexual stuff with teen girls. It was no surprise, because if UT wasn’t raining, he would throw out soccer balls, and a football ,and tell all the boys to go outside and “play.” This left the coach time alone with the girls, whom he spent most of his time “helping” them contort their bodies for gymnastics, by constantly touching the girls. We used to think that guy had it made. He got to fell up, every girl he wanted. (We were young and stupid.)
The black kids played football usually, and the white kids played soccer, and avoided the referee-less, unattended and very physically involved football.
Since I played football, since I was 8, I was the only white kid, playing with the black kids. They hated me. I never got the ball, unless they were setting me up, to be clobbered. But. I proved myself on defense, and illustrated that I was just as tough as them. One by one, those kids started talking to me, and not treating me like the other white kids.
But. Like I said, there were grown men, dealing drugs in the locker room. They didn’t think much, of me, and the looks they gave me suggested that they would one day try to beat MY ass, like they did other kids.
I never backed down from them, in retrospect a stupid idea, so they got more and more tired of me. There were several instances where they cornered me, in the locker room. I was dying inside each time, and terrified, but was able to convince them not to attack me.
After a while, it seemed that after some run ins with a certain crowd, I was about to be attacked. Some of the black kids I played football with, would get my back and keep me from being ganged. But I grew too afraid at one point, and skipped a class where a kid tipped me off, that I was going to be ganged at some point.
Just one class, I thought.
Well. Troubles continued, and I didn’t have many actual friends, at least that weren’t skinny nerds who also got regularly beat up. I had a key, to my house, so one day I planned to just walk out of the school and walk home. I was super nervous, like I thought someone would tackle me, if they saw me leaving. I learned early in life, if you act like you’re doing something boring and repetitive, people ignore you. They assume you are going through the rigorous process of life.
Nothing like “Ferris Buehler’s Day Off.” I just walked right past the principals office and main office which was at the front door. My heart was racing, and I was afraid of how I was going to explain myself when I got caught. But. Nobody even talked to me.
I walked home, and played Nintendo the rest of the day.
It was weird. Like I wasn’t even real. More of a ghost, nobody could see, or care about.
And then I leaned into that. I found weaknesses in each class, that allowed me to skip. I even walked the halls, with a pass I stole. Eventually, I never went to almost any classes. I would go to Biology, History, and Advanced Art, and skip everything else. The longer nobody noticed, the more sneaky I became. It was insane.
I was able to keep all kinds of stories going, with the teachers who would occasionally ask me why I wasn’t in class. But nobody even saw me, in class. I was just the quiet kid, who drawed all the time, instead of paying attention. So. I guess that made little difference when I wasn’t in class.
My father was special forces,/ARMY, and had a lengthy campaign in Vietnam and was a boxer, and like me, at one time a bouncer. He taught me how to fight, and I think I had a kid’s dream of becoming a boxer, and trained at home to be a boxer.
I just didn’t have any killer instincts, yet. So. Even though I have a very violent past, I have always hated violence.
Eventually, I was no longer bullied much, if ever. And I should have used that to start going back to classes, but I was getting into weed, and girls. Lost my virginity at 15, with a 13 year old girl drunk on her mother’s wine.
I was working at a grocery store, almost every day after school, so my parents wouldn’t know if I was at home all day, because I had to be at work before they got home.
With the money I made working, I got transportation, which further expanded what I was able to go get myself into.
Suddenly, someone noticed (after 3 years,) I had been skipping. I had a plan already for whenever that would likely happen. It worked. And I made an agreement with my parents, to get a GED, and go to college.
Which I did. I was little more than a long division guy, because I always skipped algebra. But. My terrible math scores were overshadowed by my scientific, historical, and literature grades, plus I got the highest grade possible, on my final essay.
College was awesome. I can honestly say, if school was like that, my story would be quite different. But. I loved college.
It was full of people, who wanted to be there, and all had common goals. I was never a popular kid, and by that time, the popular kids were mostly afraid of me. Whilst attending college, I was getting into acid, and briefly sold it, and occasionally weed, mainly just to support my lifestyle. I was never a big time dealer. But. Acid was…Amazing.
It completely changed the way I thought about, and viewed my world. I didn’t over do it, just did it a couple times a year, but it opened my mind like I couldn’t believe.
I got the flu, and missed too many classes in college, to keep my financial aid I got from my father’s military service. I was going to go back, next semester, and get back to it, but I was very distracted by girls, and drugs.
I also had recently started riding a motorcycle, like some people in my mother’s family and my Dad. It’s crazy, how interesting your life becomes, when you hand around the people I was.
I lost interest in school, and never went back.
I was still living with my parents, through all of that, and I was very low key about things.
I slowly became a young man, and by the time I was 18, I was picking up girls (women really,) on cruise ships that my parents went on. One morning I was creeping back into their cabin, still drunk, and it was very dark. My father woke up, and asked me where I had been. I admitted that I had left the cabin of two of the women whom we sat with at the pre-seated dinner room. One of them was 28, and she invited my 18 year old butt to drink with her and her sister. You know, because men are pigs, not women. Anyway. He kept asking me questions about the night, and at one point I said “you’re going to wake up Mom, be quiet.”
Still in the pitch dark, my mother’s voice pierced the cabin in a very angry tone and she said “I’ve been up, and heard the whole story!” She said we needed to talk the next day, after we got off the ship.
We had a big layover at an airport in Florida. We talked frankly, and I told her the PG version of my life. She was visibly shaken, and didn’t talk much more that day.
After a while, she accepted it and we still loved each other.
I moved out less than a year later.
Got in HUGE trouble, then worked that into getting a job in Law Enforcement in my early 20’s. Working with, you may have guessed, narcotics units…
I believed Santa was a lie, when I was 8. I set up a trap, to see if they were Santa, which was my hypothesis. And I caught them. It’s funny, because I cried ALL Christmas day…
My father was a drill sergeant, after he was wounded. And he raised me, very much like a soldier. We had fun, but he was tough on me. He would usually not help me, if I got stuck in the deep end of the pool, or had a problem. He’d make me get myself out of trouble. I resented him, FOR YEARS, for his desire to make me tough. I wasn’t a tough kid… I think that bothered him, and made him push me more. I’ve said before, the training, and knowledge my father taught to a disinterested me, was tremendously valuable.
And one day, when I was about 16, I beat my Dad in a boxing match. He was 100 lbs bigger, and he was a trained killer.
He was not proud of me.
Deep sigh… We were NEVER the same after that. That some skinny tall kid, could out box him, bothered him. It was like, he thought if I wasn’t afraid of him, he thought I didn’t respect him.
With greater regret, I have to say that that dynamic never really changed. He’s literally almost shot me before…
So. To me. He threw away our trust…
My mother, was just a sweet Southern Belle. Raised in a tiny rural community, and she never used to curse, or show bad manners. She was sheltered. Big time. She met my father when she was in college, working at the NCO Club in Columbia, where it so happened my father was a bouncer and MP type at the time, on Fort Jackson.
She had NO idea, what she was getting into.
She complements my father and I well. She tries to keep us out of too much trouble, and is likely the reason both he and I, are still alive.
I didn’t have any malicious intent towards her. I was rebellious, I guess. And crazy from testosterone. I never meant, to disappoint her…
If someone had tried to lock me down, like the kids in the details, I would have been far worse.
In fact, a LOT of kids who were brought up strictly, are the kids in most trouble. They’ll do any drug, or the girls would have sex, with any guy for a beer. Later stronger drugs, which have killed many by this point.
I’m not condoning my childhood. I’m not trying to shit on the parents like those in the details. It’s admirable, that they care enough to try so hard.
But. I think kids, are meant to be rebellious. We have such a need, to be tethered to them for so many years, we get used to them fighting our fights, and righting our wrongs.
If not for the desire to rebel, we might never grow up. The desire not to be tied down, eventually makes us want to fly. And we’re supposed to fly from the nest…
If anyone is picking up, what I’m putting down…
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