A Night Out

It has taken a few days for Big Guy and I to recover from dinner with Brad and Angelina. Flaming cheese, Brazilian sugar cane and sangria drinks, martinis, baklava and even a belly dancer--a professional belly dancer, not me and not Angelina. Add to that, the ability to keep tabs on the teens, via cell phone. I don't know that our Birdie or their Swan appreciated the blaring middle eastern,  Greekish music in the background when we called to confirm their evening plans. After all, Birdie and Swan are supposed to be foot-loose and fancy-free. Our role is to be old and home at night, as God intends. In the natural order of things, teachers live in classroom closets, police officers hang at yellow traffic lights, dentists invest in candy companies, doctors make up reasons to give shots and parents have no life. Proper parents watch history on t.v., cook vegetables, put away things so they can't be found, comment about how someone (else) needs to get the trash and say, "Do I look like an ATM?" They always wear bad clothes. And like chickens, as soon as the sun starts to set, parents head to the master bedroom coop to sleep. Parents with friends or lives totally apart from parenting buck everything that is known about adults. That is the good news for Birdie and Swan. One day, they will discover being a parent of teens beats being a teen. We have money and commonsense. We don't have a curfew clock for anyone to watch. But we will be home by 11 p.m. because that is way past our bedtime.