Moments in time…..

If you could go back in time to any moment, would you? Would you change a moment or just go back and relive a favorite memory?

Surviving life with a teenager in a small town……

Here I am at 3:48 in the wee hours of the morning….. I can’t sleep.  It started with my son being angry at us for his dad and I wanting to go out to dinner to celebrate the basketball win.  In true 15 year old adolescent fashion, he was mad about…. Playing time, how he played….. Honestly I don’t know. It just led to yelling and arguing and a threat of no ride to the bus if he didn’t apologize.  

Don’t get me wrong. I teach middle school special education and I know this is a normal phase that I learned about in a middle school philosophy class.  I thought however that boys were easier than girls at this age. We survived the teen daughter and now we have a 20 year old who appreciates us. She still gets irritated from time to time, but it is aligned with anxiety and less about us.  Dealing with a freshman son seems to be more difficult but maybe it is like childbirth and I am merely forgetting how hard it was with our daughter.

Well tomorrow we have a whole tournament of games which probably means more anger.  Oh JOY! The icing on the cake is we committed to a whole evening of schmoozing with the community at a booster event.   I dread going because I am tired of the small town community spirit. You know what I mean. The community that doesn’t care that you have a masters in special education and that your husband is the head of a survey department.  Your level of acceptance is based on how long you have been a part of the community, your success in that high school, and your child’s success in that high school. So now at 4 am I am dreading this ritual of pretending to not notice that I am not good enough to socialize with in public.  

The stupid thing is we both grew up in a small town and hated it.  We lived in a larger town and somehow forgot that small doesn’t always mean tight-knit  in a positive way so guess what we moved back to a small town when our very shy daughter was entering 6th grade and our son was starting kindergarten.  I pretend like I think it was a good thing but now I am not so sure. There are aspects that I like about small towns, but those pieces are like a pretty Christmas card that you only glance at. With a closer inspection, you see the flaws.  I want to be measured by what I have accomplished, but apparently if you are one of them, it doesn’t matter. Everyone else ranks above you and there is the basis of small towns: It all comes down to who your legendary status in small townville. 

Feel free to comment on your small town experience or surviving a teenage son.    If anyone has any great advice I would like to hear it, but if you just want to commiserate I would be glad to read that too.  It is nice just to know you aren’t alone when you can’t sleep and you have to get up in two hours to face a day you are stressing about.  

Would love some feedback!