A few days ago my teenage daughter had a friend over, who may or may not have a crush on her, based on our reading of their special Teen Language. That’s what you do, as parents of a teenager. You infer. You observe. You do your best to turn gestures, raised eyebrows, head nods and smirks into words that you can understand. Because God knows asking them a direct question is parental suicide, man.

So we were standing outside by the bonfire, my husband and me, and I half jokingly said (and can I say that I’d give my husbands left testicle not to know this next little tidbit of family trivia?) “We’d better check her cheeks when she gets back. You know how her cheeks get flushed when she’s been making out” (the kids were “looking for firewood” and had been gone a while) I watched my husband swallow back a wave of nausea, and when he opened his eyes I saw in them a fire I’d never witnessed before. “Well. That friend is 18 years old. If they ARE making out, someone’s getting arrested tonight after I kick their ass”

And so began our discussion, spanning several days, requiring many aborted conversations, about age differences and dating.

As you may know, my Very First Love was an older guy, a freshman at college when I was a freshman in high school. But our relationship was totally pure, Internet. In fact, part of what made me love the Lord was that He sent me such a fine specimen of a guy to bring me to the fold. We were totally meant to be, age difference or no. Actually I can’t even remember how long we were “together”. We were BFF, then we were BF/GF, then we were BFF again or at least that’s how I remember it. I’m sure I was devastated when we broke up, but at that time I was of the mind that since we were obviously meant to be, we would remain best friends until sometime later in our lives we would marry. Years after we split up and I was introduced to the harsh reality that is breaking up (hello, sometimes when they say “we’ll always be friends” they’re really just trying to get away in one piece), we spent several hours on the phone one afternoon during a particularly horrific breakup (his), during which the One After Me had done him terribly wrong. I was secretly thrilled. I remember everything about that day, the exact sheets that were on my bed and the way the light moved across my room as the hours passed. “One down”, I thought gleefully, full of hope even while I listened with compassion and empathy to the sound of his breaking heart.

(Fifteen years later found myself wandering the streets of Brooklyn with my first love, a dream come true if you didn’t count the part where I was engaged and trying to get pregnant, and he was preaching population control and canceling out my liberal vote.)

Last night as I was composing this post in my head, I had a sentence all ready to go about how chaste we were. How filled with the light of the Lord we were, and how we were keeping our temples clean for Jesus. Saving ourselves for marriage. We spent our weekend nights dancing at an all-ages club and witnessing about the Lord to drunks on the boardwalk. (Did we ever actually save anyone? I can’t even remember) we went to church on Sunday and spent the afternoon hours between morning and evening service listening to records or watching movies. Our relationship was the exact opposite of what People thought, gutter minded fuckers. Hell, this guy wrecked a car one time not because his hot girlfriend distracted him but because he lost himself hitting the high notes in Stryper’s “Honestly”. Therefore, I just could not see why adults had a problem with our relationship. For shit’s sake, we weren’t doing drugs, we weren’t even thinking about sex…

And then it hit me. I know 18-year-old boys. And no matter what my 13 and 14 year old mind was thinking,-my boyfriend was an 18 year old boy. I know he loved me for my mind, I know it. But I also know now, and realize now, 20 years later, that I was dating a human boy. A human MAN. Holy CRAP how did my dad not just want to kill someone? Maybe he did, I don’t know. Me and my dad? We don’t Share.

I remember once running into my ex at Publix, chatting about this and that; he’d moved to New York and I was fiendishly jealous. Of New York, of Her. Of him getting out. We talked about church and how neither of us were into Jesus so much anymore and I asked him, offhand, if he was still a virgin. (I can’t remember if I still was.) This was almost 20 years ago probably, and I remember exactly the half smile, the slow realization that colored his face as it dawned on him just how young I really was, and the one syllable bark of a laugh as he said simply, “no”.

All I know is this: Do as I say, not as I did. I know, I know. Love transcends age, blah blah blah. But I look at my teenager, already wearing a bigger bra than I did on my very best day as a fully developed woman, already 4 inches taller than me and reading books on the college reading lists and I think who wouldn’t? Who wouldn’t want to know this girl? And how the fuck can I stress to these vultures that this child isn’t (will never be!) ready? That she still panics when she misses her ride home from school, and needs help folding her sheets? That she still loves to go to her grandpa’s house on the weekends for junk food night?

I suppose the rifle will help. We’ve already got quite a rep around the high school after last year’s encounter with disaster.

Writing about this reminds me of The Virgin Suicides. I totally feel like those parents now, and I absolutely felt like those kids then. What the hell? What the hell was I thinking producing more of these creatures?

(He will chuckle now as he remembers our conversation about population control and my stance that since assholes are still breeding; it’s my responsibility to continue to add intelligent thinking liberals to the mix.)