Tag: alcohol

Aunty-strength advice

It was 97 degrees in Baltimore last week. I was sweating my guts out watching all the beloved high-school graduates tripping down and then back up the aisle. In between, a tad more than too many people gave advice:

It’s okay to fail; explore a variety of career options; and, your parents have never been prouder so now would be a good time to ask for money.

It was lovely and despite the heat, a great joy to see my niece get her diploma.

Days later, I woke up thinking “oh man, they forgot some of the most important advice.” Aunty-strength advice.

Honey, sit down so I can tell you a few things.

First of all, sex is supposed to be fun*. If it’s not, that’s not good sex. If you find yourself needing to get drunk to have sex, then you are missing out. And Jello shots? A really bad idea—here’s why.

When you go to parties, go with your friends and watch out for each other. If you see a guy friend dragging a girl off drunk, yell at him to knock it off. Or just grab her and get her out of there. Ask your friends to do the same for you.

And lastly, are you on birth control? No? Honey, do you think you want to have kids? Is now a good time to do that? Have a baby when you want to have a baby. And trust your gut. If a guy gives you even a little tiny uh-oh, tell him he has to go talk to your aunty.

Aunties everywhere. Figure out what you want to say and speak up! This is what we are for. Believe me, our nieces and nephews want realistic advice and need someone to talk to.

How about it?

*this website appears with a scary warning you have to click past. Fear not, this is a super thoughtful and well written blog.

Dads

It’s ironic with Mother’s Day just around the corner, the topic of our blog for last week and this is dads.

Our fathers were the subject of lunch conversation yesterday as three of us regaled one another with tales of our bad dads.

To put it bluntly, they were all jerks. All three drug or alcohol addicts. All verbally or physically abusive to our mothers, and to us. Two of the three died young. Evidently stumbling through life inflicting and suffering pain is bad for your health.

Years after she was grown and gone from the house, one of my co-workers was arguing with her dad about how messed up he was when she was growing up. At one point he defended himself with “well, I never sexually abused you.”

The three of us erupted in shrieks of laughter. That’s setting the bar a little on the low side wouldn’t you say?

Still, as much as our dads were big jerks, they were also smart, funny, hard-working, resourceful. Each of our dads encouraged us, in ways no other man ever would, to try scary things and be successful. Yes, father/daughter land is a maze.

Back at my desk I was left wondering, have we gone down the wrong road to end violence against women and children by thinking we could somehow shove out or wall off all the bad dads? The truth is, even after they die, they still exert an influence. How do we help one another sort this out?

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