Doris A Fuller Natalie Fuller

Mom talks about . . .

Promise You Won't Freak Out is a comedy. Not a comedy in the Seinfeld ha-ha-ha sense but a comedy in the Will Shakespeare All's Well That Ends Well tradition.

Natalie and I are announcing this up front because we want you to find this book reassuring even if its contents at times dismay you. If you're a teen, we're hoping you see that it is possible to be truthful with your parents without sending them into cardiac arrest. If you're a parent, we're hoping you take comfort in watching a fellow traveler survive the terrors of the teen years. Most of all, when you find harrowing misadventures, gross deceptions, and genuine heartache in these pages, we want you to remember that things do turn out okay.

But we know it doesn't always look that way, especially at times like the late spring morning four days after Natalie's sophomore year of high school ended. . . .

Whoever said "Ignorance is bliss" must have been the parent of a teenager. If I hadn't checked up on Natalie that morning, I would have finished my chores in unenlightened bliss. Ken and I would have avoided the paralyzing hours of wondering whether my cherished teenager had been abducted and left dead in the woods outside of town. We would not have discovered that my little stand-out had pulled off a stunt of such boldness and bad judgment that I would never have even imagined it, much less suspected her of it. We'll get to the details later (see "The Other Sex") but suffice it to say that they included the combustibles of a forbidden interstate drive, a boy we'd never met, a party, and alcohol.

On the other hand, if we had remained in the dark, Natalie might have continued some decidedly undesirable choices--including saying she could be found where she couldn't--and we would have missed an opportunity to guide her toward better ones. She might have eventually been hurt by her activities, and I would have spent the following years saying, If only I'd known. . . . Ignorance may be bliss, but knowledge is power. Given the high price of blissful ignorance in today's world, powerful knowledge always strikes me as hard to pass up. . . .



Natalie talks about . . .

Secrets . . .

Something I think parents don't always get about teenagers is how we feel about privacy and where our secrets fit into that. Here it is: When we're little kids, privacy--we're like, what's that? You guys bathe us, dress us, take us to the bathroom, decide when we sleep and when we wake up, choose our foods and decide when it goes into our mouths. Nothing is private. We're part of you, and you're part of us. We don't need any privacy, and we hate it when you do, like when you lock your bedroom door.

When we get older, we notice we're not the same as you. At first, being separated from you can be scary, but then we get the hang of it, and eventually--around the time the hormones kick in--we decide we like it a lot better this way. That's when we begin wanting privacy. We don't want you to see us without our clothes on or to know every thought we have or to be around all the time when we're with other people like us. Doing those things is about being a little kid, and we're not little any more. Being private is a way of being our own selves and being grown up.

Friends and Accomplices . . .

It is true that if you take a normal, average kid and throw her in with any type of friends, it is more likely she'll soak up that group's characteristics than some other group's. A teen whose group competes for the highest SAT score is probably going to be more interested in school than the one whose friends are competing for scoring the most "points" by using guys for sex. I know. I've had both kinds. Friends are one of those things that can make or break us.

Here's how it works. In any group, the craziest or sometimes the stupidest person sets the tone for everyone else. That's because nobody wants to be the first to try something scary or dumb, and nobody wants to be last. Most of us need that Single Brave Person (SBP) to get the ball rolling. Then we just wait for those magic words--I'll do it if you do it with me!--and off we go.

Take streaking. Thanks to Blink 182, streaking is alive and well in America. But nobody wants to go running down the street stark naked while their clothed friends watch and laugh hysterically. If you add another naked person, it's a lot less embarrassing and funnier for everyone. Add two more, and it's a party. That's certainly how my friends and I ended up streaking through my neighborhood at one o'clock in the morning. Someone said, "I dare you to streak." Someone else said, "I'll do it if you do it with me." The next thing we knew, all five of us were bouncing down the street butt-naked.

Sex, Period . . .

I know girls who have sex because they don't want to leave high school a virgin. We know from movies or older brothers, sisters, and friends that sex after high school gets pretty casual. A lot of high school girls look at this and figure that if they save their virginity through high school and then lose it later in a less meaningful relationship, their first sex won't mean as much as if they'd had sex with someone they really cared about when they were younger.

Alcohol and Other Drugs . . .

Alcohol is an issue for all of us: me, my friends, and the friends of my friends. We drink. . . . We drink basically for the same reason adults do it: Fun! I expected Mom to get a little worried when she found out that I drank sometimes, but thinking I could be alcoholic or depressed was kind of crazy. If drinking makes me a mental case, then I have bad news for parents everywhere: America's full of teenage mental cases.

Lying and Stealing . . .

Here's something else that may get me in trouble with teens: if parents really want to catch us, it's not that hard to do. . . . Sneaking out involves leading our parents to believe we are safe in bed asleep when we are really seventy-five miles away at a kegger. Since it would never occur to most parents that the teen who put on her Paul Frank pajama bottoms and crawled off to bed rubbing her eyes might actually be dancing the night away, they don't suspect. Maybe they should! This one's so easy!



Greg Talks about . . .

I can imagine parents wondering, "What kind of torture did this woman use to get her daughter to talk about this stuff! Cattle prods?"

Meanwhile, teens will be saying, "I don't care how many volts they give me! There is no way I'm telling my parents s- like this. This girl is insane."

In fact, I can testify to the fact that no truth serum, coercion or form of torture was necessary. For the most part, Mom simply asked questions. For the other part, she spied, conspired with other parents, grilled me, and used her very active imagination to divine what my sister was up to. And Natalie is not insane. She's just decided that parents really are often the best people we teens can talk to. Sometimes there's not much comfort to be had from asking a peer a big question--it's like talking to yourself in the mirror.

Of course, it helps to have a parent who knows how to listen without appearing shocked (even if she is), flipping out (even if she wants to), or instantly judging and punishing (even if she really wants to). Mom manages those tricks, at least most of the time, so both of us talk to her.

Planet Denial . . .

Parents who believe their innocent child would never view pornography share Planet Denial with parents who think their kids don't sneak into R-rated movies. There are few things as entertaining to a teenager as hearing a parent say, You are not allowed to see rated-R movies. They won't even let you in.