the naked truth

I love myself some Netflix. Like, an unhealthy amount of Netflix.

It all started with Breaking Bad, then morphed slowly into Sherlock Holmes (holy God, Benedict Cumberbatch is a delicious dish) and then, magically, I found myself getting into documentaries.

It's like a drug. I can't stop. They're just so damn interesting, and usually pretty harmless. I mean, it's cool to learn how coo coo some people are, in the case of "Jesus Camp." And a tornado wouldn't have stopped me from finishing "Man on a Wire." But at the end of the day, these documentaries are just interesting fodder to get me through a boring Wednesday night.

Until I watched "Talhotblond."

You guys.

Watch it. And then go find your teenage SD (or biological one) and super glue her shorty-short wearing booty to the couch and watch it with her. I'm not kidding. Pry her eyes open with toothpicks if you have to. If you can get Hubs to watch with you, even better, though it will probably disturb him even more than you. And if you have a teenage stepson? Let him in on the action, too.

"Talhotblond" is the true story of how the internet, false identites and chat rooms can go terribly, terribly, wrong. I'll be honest, there are some cheesy reenactments that could have been handled better and it drags a bit in the middle. But stick with it. It's an important film, and one that will be sealed into their brain forever.

(In the same way that "Requiem For a Dream" kept me from ever, ever, ever trying drugs. Or diet pills.)

Look, we live in a very new and different world. (I've talked about this before.) It's still even new to us as adults, so imagine what it's like for the younger generation. As teens, they think they have the internet/texting/social media all figured out. I mean, how hard can it be? 

My 13 year old SD, M, always laughs when I ask her, "Do you know every single person from your Instagram?" 

"Of course I know them all," M replies, rolling her eyes and texting furiously. "I'm not stupid enough to accept a request from someone I don't know."

"You know them, as in, you've personally met every single person on your Instagram account? Every single one? All 579 of them?" I ask back, doubt in my eyes. 

(Incidentally, I knew maybe 65 people when I was her age. And I'm including dead relatives and teachers. And my Sunday School teacher.)

"YES, RUBY!" she responds, then shrugs her shoulders. "I mean, some of them are just from other schools, but I still know who they are through friends. And obviously I don't actually KNOW Katy Perry, but it's her Instagram account."

Boom. 

She doesn't know them. She probably hasn't even laid eyes on over half of them. And quite frankly, who knows if Katy Perry is really Katy Perry? Maybe Katy Perry's Instagram is run by some beer guzzling, 49 year old man with an erectile dysfunction and a complete set of Star Wars action figures. My stepkid would never know.

(No offense to Katy Perry, I'm sure she runs her own account. It's just an example.)

My point is, kids do not think the way we do. And they shouldn't; that's our job. Kids aren't wired to see all the angles because they've never been exposed to them. Here's how I explained it to my SD that I think finally made sense to her:

Ask a three year to count as high as she can. She'll tell you, "egg."

Ask a 7 year old, and they'll puff out their chest and be all, "Ready? The answer is fifty nine billion, six hundred zillion, four thousand and one billion and six. OOH! And one!"

Ask a 15 year old to name the biggest number possible and they'll say, "Duh, there isn't one. Just infinity." And then they'll flip you off and ignore you until they get hungry.

My point is this. As a teen on the internet, you're still in the "egg" phase. You can't comprehend what exists out there. Teenagers don't fathom that sick, twisted people exist and create fake identities and prey on ignorant children.

That's why movies like "Talhotblond" are so important. Hubs and I can preach to M all day long about the dangers of letting strangers, specifically online strangers, into her world. But we're her parents. What the hell do we know? At least through a documentary, M knows we had nothing to do with the information being presented. She knows that this actually happened. And it's served to her on an easy-to-understand and relatively interesting platter. 

With even some curse words thrown in.

DISCLAIMER: There is sexual content in the film. Not visual at all, but it is written. But really, do you think your teenager hasn't heard worse on the school bus?

Give "Talhotblond" a try and let me know what you think. Will you watch it with your SD or SS? I know I am. 

Full steam per head

Last week I shared with you the joys of having a moody teenage stepdaughter living in the house, and how, with a little perseverance, I was able to strategically coax her into telling me all about her life at the moment. I considered that a win.

But you can't win them all.

More often than not, that little teenage stepdaughter of mine is tolerable. Sure, she sighs a lot and has a perpetual bug up her ass scowl on her face. But every now and again, she does curl up those corners of her mouth into a Wednesday Addams-like grin, and the whole family celebrates with chocolate and polka dancing.

 And then? Sometimes? She does things that make ZERO sense to me.

So get this...

Last Thursday we had the two girls overnight. As per usual, I informed both of them that they would be taking showers before bed that evening. This was not an option. They moaned and groaned, but knew there was no getting out if it. The 10 year old, smart kid that she is, took her shower immediately after dinner, letting her hair air dry so she could sleep on a somewhat water-free pillowcase.

Such was not the decision for M, the 13 year old.

The child tried to outsmart me. She "did her homework" until 9:15. And when I say "homework," I mean she sat in her room texting while one of her textbooks sat open to the same page for 2 hours straight. 

At 9:45, I headed to my bathroom to begin my nightly routine of makeup removal and counting my gray hairs (which are multiplying by the second). As I passed by M's room, I stuck my head in and said, "Do you realize it's 9:30? You still have a shower to take."

OH MY GOD, stepbloggies. The fit that this kid threw. Huffing, puffing, snorting, snarling, stomping. It was better than a Lady Gaga concert. Unfortunately for M, her plan to make us "forget" about her shower didn't go over like it does at Mama Ex's. I remember things, yo. I'm like a very fashionable elephant. 

She begged us to please consider letting her skip the shower. No dice. I reminded her that the longer she stood whining about it, the later it was getting. That seemed to work.
She got in the shower.

If your teen stepdaughter or daughter is anything like mine, there is no such thing as a "quick shower." No, no. At 10:00, she was just getting out. My eyelids were drooping so I laid in bed, half-listening, half sleeping. You know, just making sure she didn't slip and hit her head on the sink.

The house was quiet. All was calm. And then I heard it. 

Pssssshhhhh. 

Silence.

Pssssshhhhhhh.

Silence.


Psssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Silence.

I looked over at Hubs who was flat on his back, eyes closed and doing a super awesome impression of a saw mill. By the 8th pssssshhhhh, I could take it anymore and dragged my very relaxed ass out of bed and down the hall to the girls' bathroom.

I'm not quite sure how to tell you what I saw next, because it's haunted me for a week. My lovely, smart, 7th grade educated stepdaughter was standing in the bathroom, in a robe, looking in the mirror as she flat ironed her

SOPPING. WET. HAIR.  

Well, actually she was burning the ever living shit out of her hair. Over and over again, she took piece after piece of wet strands, and used her $200 GHD flat iron (which gets cray cray hot), and running it over the follicles until they were straighter than...I don't know, something really straight. 

The steam coming off of the straightener as it pulled through her hair rivaled this:

                                        

I immediately grabbed the iron out of her hands and asked her what the hell she was trying to accomplish. To which she calmly replied, "Well, Ruby, you made me take a shower. I need to straighten my hair before bed or it will be wavy. So that's what I'm doing."

Duh.

Sensing she didn't really understand the magnitude of the damage she was doing, I said, "M, honey. Your hair is wet. That straightener is for dry hair only. You are literally setting your hair on fire. That's what that steam is. Remember how when you microwave corn and all that steam comes out when it gets hot? That's what is happening. I mean, I have a hair dryer you can use that will make this go a lot faster."

And do you know what she had the kahunas to say?

"My friend Maddy says steam is good for your hair. So, yeah."

And then she followed that little sentiment with, "and I wouldn't have to do this if you didn't make me stay up this late to take a shower."

I don't remember a lot after that. Hubs tells me I came back to the bedroom and woke him up rambling something to myself about boarding school.

But this is parenting right? (Sorry, step parenting.) Kids know better than adults at this age. Quite frankly, I could have had an entire manual entitled, "500 Reasons NOT to Flat Iron Wet Hair" and M would have found a reason to ignore it. It's just what they do. This all falls under that category of "she'll figure it out someday."  Besides, after 18 years, I finally understand the pain and sheer disgust my mother felt the day I walked into the kitchen with both of my eyebrows plucked like this:                        

I guess Cosmetic Karma is a beeotch.