teenSpeak

I may be showing my age here, but I have to say, I am getting really annoyed at the way teens communicate online. It's not all of them, but some have such an atrocious grasp of the English language, it makes me want to cry.

Case study: I have two cousins, both around age 15, both female, both live in Arizona. Cousin S is on my dad's side of the family, Cousin J is on my mom's side (she's my mother's cousin's granddaughter, but that counts as a cousin in my huge Italian family, hehe). I am friends with both of them on Facebook. See some of their updates:

Cousin S:
...the orange hair is back!!!!
...doesn't want to go to physical therapy tomorrow!!!!
...feels stupid

Teenager-ish, but reasonable. Now see...

Cousin J:
...bord dont want to go to school:(
...dance tonight then gym ugh not looking forward to it haah so tired from schoolhow many days until the next break
...goingt to apple bees with the fam. haha

For some reason, half or more of her updates include "haha" even when it's not something funny (like "goin 2 the mall haha"). Her spelling is awful, and her friends' responses are even worse (all caps, complete netspeak, etc.). I feel like I need to decode her messages sometimes. All of her pics are completely inappropriate for a girl her age (she and her friends in bikinis trying to look sexy) and she's constantly begging for people to comment on her photos.

Cousin S, if she posts pictures of herself and her friends in bathing suits, always is in a funny or dorky pose, just trying to be funny. She uses Facebook to keep in contact with out-of-state family, and her friends seem to leave very respectful comments.

Now I know these kids are growing up texting, which I didn't start until after college. By neccesity, abbreviations are used in texting, and it has spilled over into all of their online communication. I admit to using lol, omg, zomg, brb, and wtf quite a bit, but only because they're fun, and MUCH shorter than the original phrase. I have never typed wuteva, 2 instead of to/too, 4 instead of for, u instead of you, ur instead of you are, etc. I'd rather shoot myself.

If I make a typo on Twitter, I erase the tweet and re-do it. I am a completely anal spelling/grammar Nazi. Still, I feel like I'm from another world sometimes when my 21-year-old sister, only six years younger than me, types emails and texts in a seemingly different language.

Some teen tweets that make me laugh:

~~~~~
BISH, I LOVE YOU SHUT UP. LMFAO

its been obvious dat wuteva i like, u and tnice will say da opposite.

ha! gyrl wuteva workz!

yeah! for realz! i wanna see dat!
~~~~~

Yeah. 'Nuff sed. =P

Adoption

(From 4/30/09)

So, some people have been wondering why for most of my life I couldn’t wait to have babies, and now I suddenly could totally live without the experience. No, it is not because that’s how Simon feels and I just want him to like me. I’m not in high school, and I have a mind of my own now. I shall explain.

When I was dating Chris, things were obviously not ideal, which I realized later. So of course, to fix that, I wanted kids. Like so many people, it stemmed from a desire to be loved, and who would love me more than my own offspring? I do enjoy children, to an extent, and have worked with them a lot. The fact that most of those jobs were somewhat miserable failed to register I guess. My rational mind glossed over the facts while my irrational mind clung to the illusion that I couldn’t WAIT to have kids.

Then that relationship fell apart. I knew I still wanted to be a mother someday, but it wasn’t as important as making myself happy first. I dated around, met Simon, and the rest is history. =) But what finally changed was my attitude about children. When people I know started having them, I used to be insanely jealous. Now I just look at it as another opportunity to play with a cute kid that I can give back after. Yes, I’m good with babies, and they’re adorable, but waking up at 2 am for feedings? The horrible things pregnancy does to your body? Not what I looked forward to. Yes, everyone tells me it’s beautiful and wonderful and everything is fine when it’s actually you having the kid. But it still doesn’t appeal to me. Childbirth scares the bajeezus out of me. I’ve never had surgery, and I’d like to avoid it.

Simon also pointed out, as I’ve seen with many friends, all the horrible things that can go wrong with a newborn. Narrow aortas that require heart surgery on a 3-day-old infant, squished heads that need a baby-sized helmets to fix, and the list goes on and on. Simon had quite a few issues himself, which I don’t blame him for being reluctant to pass on. So I thought about it, and I really like the idea of adoption. I can skip pregnancy, infancy, and potty-training, and still have a kid? Awesome! And in MA, it’s free to adopt a child from the DSS system after a 6-month trial foster period. I really like this idea. No birth defects to worry about, and I get to choose the gender of my child to boot.

It may sound selfish, like I’m trying to take the easy way out. If I want to be a parent, I should be willing to make sacrifices and take chances, yes? But how about this? There are SO many children waiting to be adopted. The population is WAY too high to sustain. I’m doing the country a favor. I see nothing wrong with that. =)

Please, baby-makers, take no offense. Obviously, someone has to actually have children. I see adoption as my stand against people who pop out 8 kids and live on welfare. I just can’t justify having (or adopting) more children than I can reasonably provide for. I want to send her to college, I want her to have her own room, and maybe I’ll buy her a car. I can’t do that if I have 8 kids, or even 3 or 4. People need to start taking parenthood more seriously, and stop depending on other people to provide for them. I see excessive baby-making as a form of greed: I want lots of kids so I’m going to have them! Me me me! But the children have to live with your choices. And if things go wrong, maybe I’m going to be the one taking care of your little girl someday, the one YOU couldn’t provide for.