Tit for Tat

I grew up in a single parent household and my mom never really punished me all that much.  Until I learned to drive, I spent most of the time that I was at home in my bedroom, reading.  So really, how much trouble could I get in to with that?  The answer is, not that much.  Once I started to drive and had my own car though, I had a little taste of freedom and all bets were pretty much off.  I was pretty good at concocting stories about where I was and what I was doing to throw my mom off my trail.

The time I drove three hours to a keg party to meet up with some guys that my friend and I met on Spring Break a few weeks before?  I was 'spending the night with a friend and then helping her get ready for prom the next day.'  She looked beautiful on her way to the dance, I'm sure...I just had nothing to do with it.  When I think about how some of those situations could have turned out, I shudder.  What a dumb girl I was, sometimes. Even still (out of town keg parties notwithstanding), my teen shenanigans could have been much worse and I stayed out of trouble, for the most part.

I don't think I was ever truly 'grounded' until just before I turned 18, when I was grounded for a month because I missed curfew.  Seemingly harsh, right?  The thing is, I missed curfew by pretty much an entire day.  I was out all night with my boyfriend, doing every single thing that gives parents of teenagers (and especially teenage girls) nightmares.  I was doing ALL OF THE THINGS.  (In my defense, said boyfriend is now my husband - yep, married to my high school sweetheart and really I wasn't that kind of girl, no way.)  Now, it's not like I gave my mother a play by play of my night when I finally got home, but I'm sure she could infer some things on her own.  And apparently, I had a right to a speedy trial because I was found guilty and sentenced to a month of lockdown before I could even plead my case.

Being grounded when you 1) are almost 18, so you think you're grown up already and know everything and 2) have a car that can take you anywhere you want to go, pretty much sucks.  And for the first time ever, my mom was pretty relentless in sticking to my punishment.  About three weeks in to my teenage purgatory, I decided that I deserved time off for good behavior.  My upcoming birthday seemed like a great reason to plead my case for early release, so I called my parole officer mother and assured her that of course I had learned my lesson and would never miss curfew again, especially when I was out with my boyfriend (let us remember again, he's now my husband).

Miracle of all miracles, my mom relented and I was a free woman just in time for my eighteenth birthday.  So, what was my first act as a legal adult, just released from a month of being grounded for missing curfew?  I went and got a tattoo of course, just because I could.  Clearly, I was an adult, people - and I had the tattoo to prove it.  I'm sure my mom learned her lesson for grounding me, too.

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