My entire life, I've had an internal debate with myself over whether I can handle owning children one day. While I enjoy kids and find them cute from a distance, I've always wondered if I would be good at caring for one every single day of its life- namely when it gets a little bit older, a little bit less cute, and a little bit more into enjoying bad things like drugs or the Kardashians.
I won't bore you with the insanity that is the inner workings of my mind, mainly because last night I threw out all of my old concerns and realized that kids these days are NUTS. I learned this at 10pm as I was purchasing Nyquill and Kitten Food at CVS. I went to the self check out (because I KNOW the cashier would judge me for those pathetic items), and as I swiped my groceries through the scanner, a premature receipt went whipping out of the machine. I looked at the reciept and it said "PREVENTING TEEN COUGH MEDICINE ABUSE- you must be 18 years old to purchase this item."
WHAT? Teens are abusing NYQUILL now? Are you kidding me? Are teens abusing nyquill to get drunk? Because if so, thats impressive- one shot of that knocks me out for DAYS. Or is this more of a 'Tiger Woods on Ambien' type situation? Because it seems to me that most teens should be thrilled to be having any sex at all- they don't need to take a ton of medicine to try to make it a trippy experience. (remember, we are talking about teens under 18, so they are NOT in college yet). And if they do need to be altering their mindset, what happened to good old fashioned ecstacy pills? After doing some research via my sister Moley Cleary, I learned that this is indeed a real issue- in fact, Lil Wayne himself has lyrics about "purple drank," which is apparenly cough syrup mixed with alcohol (I've said it once and I'll say it again- rappers are TERRIBLE influences). And here I thought "purple drank" was grape soda. Man am I out of the loop.
This made me realize that by the time I get married (lets say 10 years from now.. conservatively), then have kids (which lets face it, will be a struggle because I will be OLD, so lets put that 20 years from now), and they become teens (now we are looking at the year 2098), the things teenagers are getting into probably aren't even invented yet- and this is truly terrifying. I thought, as a teen myself once, that I was well prepared to handle the issues that teens face. I took DARE, I watched 90210 and Saved by the Bell.. but I realized that I would be lucky to have my kid pull a 'Jessie Spano on caffiene pills,' or even a 'David Silver on whatever he did that made him stay up all night in the college radio booth.' Remember that? Donna was really worried!
Anyway, I had a lot of time to think about all of this because I was waiting on a CVS employee to come click the button on my screen procaiming that "the shopper is over 18." Now for the best (and most important) part of this story: The cashier guy who came over to see what illegal items I was purchasing INSISTED UPON checking my ID to make sure I was 18 years old. This was obviously the biggest compliment of my LIFE and I nearly hugged him. Now, I know that I don't look 18 to most people, and maybe he was high on cough medicine or something, but I don't care. He had to check. I look 18. I am so young and pretty. Wait... what was I talking about again?
