Secrets

When other people have them they don't work for me. LOL But I have them. I don't have a lot and they mostly all occurred before my 18th birthday so why are they relevant now? I guess they are only relevant to my children. There are things about me I don't want them to know... yet. I think it's too much. Then again when I find out secrets about my mother I'm not too shocked, okay, well, maybe a little but I guess it depends on the secret.
Secrets that my kids have bother me. I understand that my teens think they have a "right" to privacy. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Okay, sorry, but I don't agree. I'm sure I thought that when I was a teen but I didn't have a cool parent like me. haha My girls are constantly telling me, "I can't tell you," and I hate it. I really hate it. I want to know everything. I want to know what they are doing, who they are talking to, who they like, who they don't like, who their friends like, etc. etc. Actually, I think it's important for me to know this stuff. How can I be a good parent if I don't know that the reason they want to go to XXX house is because YYY is going to be there and their life might end if it doesn't happen.
Last night I told Kimberly that she couldn't go to the Homecoming dance. She can't date so I thought, Why should she go? She started crying. Oh boy. So, of course, I changed my mind and we made arrangements for her to go. It was fine. It was benign (she told me she didn't even dance with any boys but stayed with her girlfriends all night). Okay, so what was the big deal. I guess the big deal is that I don't know what she's being exposed to. I don't know what kind of music they will play. I don't know what boys are going to "hit" on her and if she's open to that or not. And she doesn't tell me much. That makes me kind of sad.
Emily is the worst though. "I can't tell you," is almost a mantra of hers and makes me want to roll my eyes every time I hear it, oh, and SMACK her too! Of course you can tell me, I'm your MOMMY! Who else will listen and care? Well, all her friends listen and care. This morning she kept saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," to her friend and I wanted to know why. I wasn't told. "It's not my secret," she says, but even if it was she probably wouldn't tell me. Boo hoo.
I'm told I like to share secrets. What? Who me? I do not share stuff that I know is a secret but I admit to sharing stuff I know because I don't think it's a secret. My niece told me that people shouldn't have to tell me, "That's a secret!" I should know. Huh? I don't really keep secrets so I don't get it.
But that's not true either. I keep secrets about money I spend. I keep secrets about my friends, and sometimes my family (when they ask me to, of course). And, as mentioned before, I keep secrets of my past. I did tell my girls a story from my teens this morning when I was trying to ingratiate them to my way of thinking (that they should tell me everything) about when I snuck out to go to a party at the beach. When I got home my mother pried my mouth open to sniff it to see if I had anything to drink (I hadn't). I thought that was horrible. I still think that was horrible. I don't blame her in a way, but truthfully it wasn't me that did all that crap to make them not trust teens, it was my brothers. Then I did do stuff because they weren't trusting me anyway. They never let me do anything fun (like go to drunken beach parties!) which is why I let Kimberly go to the Homecoming dance. Because, really, she doesn't keep that many secrets from me. And I trust her.