First: I totally
forgot to mention that my husband is funny.
When I told him about my epic adventure at the New York DMV and how I totally
got the guys at the car wash to put on the new place, his first and only most
important question, after ALL OF THAT BUREAUCRACY and the fact that my name has
now been forcibly changed to LoriMarie, was the following:
“But….did you look at the license plate? Does it say ‘poop’ or something on it? Because that sounds like it would be hard to
change.”
Yep, he’s a comedian.
Luckily he’s cute so instead of killing him, I laughed. Because actually, that WOULD be a bad
problem, considering how it took to get everything straightened out.
Also, I am oddly fascinated with the MTV show “Sixteen and
Pregnant.” Why is this? I have no experience with this topic—I was
never sixteen and pregnant (seriously, did you know my mother? ), I have never known anyone who was
sixteen and pregnant, I don’t have a sixteen year old, and I don’t want to jinx
myself here, but when and if my maternal instinct does ever kick in, I can
almost guarantee that person will not be sixteen and pregnant on my watch.
So, why do I like this show?
I was really thinking about it the other day, trying to figure out what the appeal is, and to identify
some kind of throughline that the producer is trying to create. It’s not just a lack of education and good
example that is pervasive in the narrative–
though I will say, the one girl who had parents who were older and
better educated chose to give her child up for adoption, and that girl seems to be the
one who has her future back and is the least traumatized. Those parents were like “we are not raising
your child—you got yourself into this, now make a plan.” Sadly, the girls who had the young parents are the ones most likely to repeat the scenario and get pregnant themselves, even though the moms seem to really want them not to make the same mistakes they made. This part is mysterious.
Maybe what I like about it is the way it’s set up, like the
teen moms are all happy and without a care, and even though they’re pregnant
they have really no idea what they’re in for, and you’re waiting for reality to
hit them like a Mack truck, and it’s right about in the middle of labor that
something changes, and the teen dads lose it and start acting like teenagers,
and the teen moms are like “Holy crap….I have a baby,” and WHAM! That was it
for their childhood, and they know it, and you know it, and then there’s the
video “confessional” at the end, and every single one of them says “If I knew
then what I know now, I would definitely have used protection, and they’re
crying, and there’s some strange satisfaction that you feel because you know
that they know that they made the wrong choice, and why is this compelling
television? There is something oddly satisfying
about this even though it’s mostly the same story over and over, and you really
do feel bad for the girls, because they’re just little kids and now they can’t
do anything they’d planned for their lives.
This is exactly like when you go to the Anne
Frank house in Amsterdam, and it’s so sad, and there are always some teenagers
in there who are on a class field trip or something, and you’re like “just wait…”
and they’re goofing off and poking each other and making jokes, and you’re like
“just wait….” And then you all get to
the room where Anne Frank had to sit there and stay quiet and there is one
window and you look out and realize that this is the same view that
she saw every day and that this view was the last thing she ever saw before the
Nazis came to get her family—- and everything and everyone is quiet, and you’re
all sharing in the common experience of putting yourself in someone else’s
shoes, especially the teenagers because they’re just a little older than Anne
Frank herself. It’s so heavy, and you
don’t hear a peep from anyone for the rest of the tour, and I guess that’s a
little bit what “Sixteen and Pregnant” is like—that moment where everything
changes, and you are there to see it.
And with that, I am off to Orlando for a business trip. I'm sure it is 85 degrees there, so I will be mostly inside the hotel and will be able to update.
