It was junior (or maybe senior) year of high school; my then-friend Christina was telling me something about her mom asking if she’d had sex yet (I think that was the scenario) and she said no, and her mom said something along the lines of, “Good, because you’re not old enough yet” and she asked, “Well, when do you think I will be old enough?” And her mom said 25. So, apparently I am now old enough to have sex. Huh.
I missed my goal of reaching my 18th birthday sans virginity (a silly, archaic word) — but only by a few weeks. He wasn’t very bright, but I was just using him for sex. “I know you’re going to be Batman.” (Jenny and Niki will get that… freakin’ hilarious.) He was probably the youngest-ever manager of a Papa John’s, though.
Maybe it’s true, what they say about “getting married too young.” I prefer not to take a stance one way or the other; I’m wary of any such over-generalizations. And the other night, Sam (I’m back into the risky business of using co-workers’ real names online) made the point that it is only very recently in our history as a society that marriage is commonly seen as something you “hold off on.” Only a few decades ago, getting married was what you did when you turned 20 or 21. Or 18 or 19. Hell, a few centuries ago, people got married at age 13 and 14. So if any time period’s an anomaly, it’s this one.
[Tangent: Not that I think that's a bad thing. Quite the contrary. I like the fact that there's not so much pressure for marriage from all sides. I guess there still is if you move in certain fundamentalist circles. But fortunately, I do not. Regardless, though, society does much prefer couples to singles. Scoff if you will; I might've (stupidly) scoffed at such an observation when I was ½ of a couple. But I see now that it's true.]
I don’t have any regrets, though. I think back, and really, I can’t see how things could have happened any other way. “Forget regret, or life is yours to miss.” Ahh, my show tunes. And for the most part, I’m pretty damn happy in this, the now.
At the risk of sounding like the end of one of Ken’s (shout-out!) blog entries: Most of you don’t know what this is all about anyway.
READ ME: Disclaimer
8 Responses to "Late Night “Personal” Entry"
He was probably the youngest-ever manager of a Papa John’s, though.
At least he was going places …
Actually, it’s kind of a myth that people used to get married commonly at 13 and 14. It’s even looked on as unusual at the time Romeo & Juliet was written, i.e., it’s very weird for Juliet’s dad to be trying to marry her off at such a young age.
Good poing, Hillary. The “thing” is that people didn’t used to go through “adolescence” (this hazy period of not-quite-a-kid-but-not-yet-an-adult is a relatively modern invention…industrial revolution or so). So, while people commonly held off a few years before actually getting married (i.e., they still waited until late teens or so), you were generally seen as fully capable of marriage when you hit 13* or so (today we don’t trust people to work a steady job at that age).
Actually, evidence seems to show that ‘puberty’ came later for earlier generations, and so ancients might not have hit marriageability/adulthood until their mid-teens anyway. But the point is that puberty=adulthood for ancients, while puberty=”lock them in their room!” for us.
Yes, puberty is happening earlier now. There have been connections shown between earlier puberty (at least in girls) and the synthetic estrogens found in many of our foods and beauty products. So, our great-mothers typically reached puberty at approx. age 14-15, whereas it’s age 11-12 now.
Also, probably Juliet’s dad was just a creep. That angle should be examined more.
Why the asterisk, Xon? Were you going to do a footnote/disclaimer but then forgot?
I wrote a message for a 100-year time capsule CD-ROM (yes, they included a reader) pondering the institution of marriage. My speculation was what if it dissolves as a popular institution within a century. The fact that people seem to wait later and later is interesting evidence that people just might stop waiting and never do it! I don’t want to immediately connect this question to statistics about births out of wedlock over time or economic class and marriage, but those numbers will probably have some sort of bearing in figuring this out.
Teehee… Batman! You know how to make me giggle like a little girl, M@ber.
You know how to make me giggle like a little girl, M@ber.
Well, then my goal has been accomplished.
Er…I meant that last paragraph of my comment/post to be a ‘footnote’. But I forgot to put the asterick before it.