My Dad Wants Me To Have Health Insurance, Too!

So let's be best friends.

When I was a little girl, like three or four or five (okay twelve, but whatever), the cool thing to do if you were wearing the same shoes as another girl was to stick your leg out, toe pointed towards hers. Then she'd do the same, and you'd beam at each other, and that's how friendships were made in the Long Island suburbs. Not like in Queens, where you went up to random kids in the playground asking, "Can I play?" only to be looked up and down and asked your age before being told, "Okay, go stand over there," and as you jog over to where they pointed, you excitedly think, "Cool, I'm in!"

Years and years ago, after I was finished being young enough to make friends so easily, I read an interview with Jennifer Love Hewitt during her Party of Five days. Remember those? When everyone wanted to get a dog just to name it Bailey, and teenage girls all around the country alternated between wearing sleeves that were too long and doing significant squinting in the mirror, a la Julia?

Anyway, JLH did this interview, and in it she talked about her best friend, a girl whose name was also Jennifer. She explained how she met the BFF, saying the girl had been a huge fan and written her a letter expressing her admiration for JLH's portrayal of Sarah, blah, blah, blah, and they'd been best friends ever since.

I thought that was lame. What an ego! Becoming best friends with someone who's a FAN? Fucked up.

Yeah, I'm over it now. Because if a Friend Fairy told me I could pick anyone I don't know to be my newest friend, it'd definitely be Diablo Cody.

But I'm not going to send her a fan letter. No, after two hours of reading her blog and following her links and resisting the urge to leave comments on half her blog entries, I'm just going to blog about her and her movie Juno.

I saw it last weekend. The theatre was so packed that I sat on a step for the movie, because my only other option was sitting in the front row. There are very few movies that I walk out of, ready to turn around and see them again right away. But this was one - it was that good. And what fucking luck - to have Juno come out right when Jamie Lynn Spears is announcing her knockedupness!

A friend and I had an argument about the dialog - whether or not kids are really speaking in that Dawson's Creek, Gilmore Girlsesque way. I suppose some are, and also that a movie with "like" peppered throughout wouldn't go as far.

So yeah, go see Juno. And read Diablo's blog. But not you, Mom. You'll be offended by it. But you can see the movie - that won't offend you. And Diablo, call me. We can get together and talk about health insurance.

Let's Talk About Sex: Hypocrosy

I don't really remember talking specifically with my father about sex. (Whoa. Two words that seem weird in the same sentence.) He was there for the sex questions that came up during dinner. I vaguely remember him telling me something helpful after I'd first gotten my period, when we were in the car headed towards the LIE, and my being surprised that he, what with being a boy and all, could be helpful about girl things such as periods. The majority of sex talks usually happened with my mother, before my father had gotten home from work - maybe that's why he wasn't involved in them. He was the parent who explained a vasectomy to me when I was 15 or 16 though. In a condo in New Hampshire, my parents and I standing near the kitchen.

I do remember sitting on the floor of the den, on the ugly green carpet, while my mother sat on the couch feeling inspired after a particularly good After-School Special, and telling me I should wait until I get married to have sex. But if I wanted to have sex before that, I should use condoms. And if I wouldn't buy them myself, I should tell her, and she'd get them for me. Thanks Mom. In hindsight, I think she should have pointed out that if I was too embarrassed to buy my own condoms then perhaps I wasn't mature enough to be having sex, but whatever. It was a good effort. She made her point. "Here's something to aim for, but if you don't make it, then just aim for this and I'll help if you need me to." Okay.

I also remember coming home from middle school and asking my mother was cum was. It was the only time I recall her ever getting flustered from a sex question. When she told me to give her a minute, she had to go look it up, I was surprised. "You don't KNOW?" I think the truth was she needed to buy time to go collect herself. What she told me was that she knew, but just wanted to make sure she was going to explain it correctly to me. Uh huh.

When I was 18, after my grandma died, my grandfather quickly hooked up with his "girlfriend" and they came from Florida to visit. We didn't like her, and not just because she wasn't my grandma and it was too soon. We had real reasons. Anyway. My grandpa and this woman were sort of living together, and my mother told them they couldn't sleep together when they came to visit. I was 18 and my brother was 20, and I think we both believed my mother said what she did because she didn't like the girlfriend.

My mother claimed it was because she had "impressionable children" living in the house, and two unmarried adults sleeping in the same bed was unacceptable for us to be seeing. Not that we'd be seeing old people in bed. Because ew. But you know. Anyway. This went on for a long time.Four or five years passed this way. My grandpa would come visiting from Florida, girlfriend in tow, and he'd sleep on the bed in the basement, while the girlfriend slept in the guest room.

At this point my brother's girlfriend would frequently come over at night after dinner, and they'd lock themselves in my brother's room to "watch movies" and she'd stay over all night. In the mornings I'd often run into her on the stairs, putting on her sneakers to sort of sneak out of our house. I say "sort of" because she wasn't really sneaking anything. My dad was already awake and in the kitchen, I saw her, my brother certainly knew she was there. They weren't fooling anybody. I think maybe my mother was trying to fool herself.

The whole thing was ridiculous. My grandpa couldn't sleep in the same room with the girlfriend he sleeps in the same room with in Florida, at our house. Because of the impressionable children. One of whom was having his own girlfriend sleep over in the same room.

I love for things to be fair. Always have. Probably why I like law so much. Had I not disliked my grandpa's girlfriend so much, I would have fought this battle. Eventually, my mother caved and let my grandpa and his girlfriend both sleep in the study. I think it was after my grandpa was having a hard time with the basement stairs.

Unfortunately, my mother accidentally sent the wrong message. She meant for the adults to be leading by example, or some shit like that. All that I learned was that when you don't like someone, it's kind of okay to do dicky things to them. Which, if I think about how the world works, kind of does seem accurate, though unfair. I also learned that my mother can be a bitch. I mean, I felt like she was a bitch to me many times before that, but I'd been taught not to believe my interpretation of situations involving me, and this was one that didn't involve me that I felt I was seeing clearly.

Are you wondering where I'm going with this? I know I am. My point is, my parents tried to be honest about sex and relationships. But even when you try, you can still miss.