Round and Round the Teenager

Note: this is a departure from my regular blog posts because:
1. it happens in the present (when I'm 45 and my son is 14)
2. it is not about dating, although it is about parenting as a single, divorced mom
3. it is my first entry to Scribbit. This month's write-away contest has the theme "Going Places", so here I go.

Round and Round the Teenager

When I moved into my apartment building 12 years ago, my son's arm could barely reach the ground-floor button in the elevator. The ride up and down the elevator to the ninth floor must have seemed like a big trip for him.

Now at 5' 5" (165 cm) and growing, my fourteen-year old now calls me "shorty". He outdoes me in almost any aspect as do most of his classmates in his gifted class, and looking at him, just finishing 7th Grade (or Grade 7 as they say in Canada and "kita zayin" in Israel in Hebrew), I drift back to my own summers as a teenager.

Although I had a seemingly conventional family (mother, father, sister, brother and canary), summer cottage, sailboat, canoe, and chipmunks and squirrels we managed to domesticate, with the help of some sunflower seeds conveniently strewn on the steps leading up to the cottage, I dreaded the loneliness of not seeing my friends in the summer. They spent their summer
at the other side of the lake, which was 60 miles (100 kilometers) away.

I spent my days swimming or canoeing in the half-frozen lake, thankful for the fact that we had mosquitoes on our side of the lake, but the west side of the lake had mosquitoes AND fish flies. I never experienced the now common occurrence of bears actually coming up to the cottage property, scouting out food.

Fast forward back to my fourteen year-old. How different his summers are -no father, sister, brother or bird (at least not living with him since I'm divorced and don't recall giving birth to any other kids), computers, internet, Tel Aviv humidity combined with 40-degree Celsius heat,
but with no hole in the ozone layer like in Canada. He also doesn't seem very interested in meeting up with his friends. After endless tests and projects, bar mitzvah parties and end-of-year get- togethers, his peers just want one thing - to sleep-in.

Tomorrow we are going to the funeral of a dear family friend, 80-years old, who was like a grandfather to my son. When I'm eighty, my son will be forty-nine, five years older than I am today. Will there be any water left in the lakes? Will there be any fuel to power the planes across the oceans?

The price of gas doesn't affect the time-traveling mind of this writer,nor her teenager who will have to be content with traveling round and round Wikipedia until this writer finishes paying for his bar mitzvah travels and festivities from last year. (But that's another post yet to be written..)

Post 1: What's sex got to do with it?

originally created as column 1, September, 2000

So why do women want sex anyway?

There are vibrators – there is literature, internet sites, phone lines. You don’t even need men to make babies, as there are sperm banks. So why date? With lesbianism seeming to be in fashion, I feel almost apologetic when I admit that I still like men. I mean I know that they are from Mars and we are from Venus, but I happen to like men still.... their deep voices, their charm (sometimes) and their Peter Pan complex. They need their space. God forbid you pressure them. So why date them? For sex? I think it’s for a hug. A male hug. It’s something you just can’t get from a girlfriend, a child, a mentor. You need a man. I mean I need one anyway. Someone to hug, to turn me on, to put his arm around me in a movie or to walk hand in hand down the street or look at a sunset. Old, romantic, maybe out of fashion, but I want a boyfriend. Yes, one shouldn’t need. So I don’t need. I want.

I thought of a new strategy. Men can sense a woman “looking” (for a boyfriend) a mile (kilometer?) away and will avoid her like the plague. So how about if I print a t-shirt saying “I don’t want a boyfriend.” I have girl- next-door looks and men just don’t start up with me on the street, so perhaps if I had a t-shirt trying to keep them away, it might work. Enough of internet dating, parties, friends, hikes.... just a plain t-shirt trying to keep them away..... I mean why are men so fascinated with lesbians anyway. They see them as a challenge and think that if they were to meet the real thing, they will forget about their sexual orientation and see the real light.

I really shouldn’t speak for lesbians but speaking for three straight females; (not their real names)

• Liat – single, tall and thin
• Dafna – divorced without kids, medium height, medium weight, shoulder length hair
• Gilit Frank – divorced plus one, short, a little chubby

All three of us attractive and basically normal. By normal I mean that we don’t have horns, we enjoy sex, we want a long-term relationship – some of us want marriage and kids. We all dress fairly well and are positive educated women, not overpowering and fun loving...

And despite the fact that we have experience in dating and relationships, the men are still from Mars and haven’t managed to connect with the women from Venus. And I don’t think they’ve read John Gray’s books anyway, or perhaps they are too busy reading John Gray’s books and have decided they don’t really want a girlfriend after all.

So I think I’ll print out that t-shirt. Perhaps it will work. Anyone want to volunteer to wear one?