Monday, June 24, 2013

The Older Boy Situation

The other day I realized that I had never had a celebrity crush on any one who was not older than me. Even to this day the celebrities who I am attracted to are some where between ages thirty and fifty while I am only eighteen. In my defense celebrities that are close to my age consist of Justin Beiber and the boys from One Direction, and I'm sorry but  I haven't been into the pretty boy thing since I was thirteen years old.
Now it would be one thing if my fondness for older men stayed with in the realms of impossibility, such as my crushes on Hugh Jackman and Channing Tatum. But this is not nor has it ever been the case. Even when it came to my actual relationships I have always gravitated towards older guys. When I was in kindergarten I distinctly recall "dating" a third grader who I rode the  bus with. Yeah. It started that young. As I got older it only got worse. Though my boy friends never reached the ages of Hugh and Channing, they did not always stay with in the limits of legality either. On my eighteenth birthday I greatly celebrated that finally I was no longer jailbait.

Now I just want to point out right now that I am NOT one of those girls that goes out looking for older boys to date. I do not have "daddy issues" because that's just creepy. I also do not date older boys to rebel against my parents. Trust me I could think of a lot more rebellious things to do to cause my parents to have a heart attack if I really wanted to. I simply attract older guys and then in turn end up falling for them. I realized that it may have been turning into a habit about a year ago when I told one of my close friends about the first time I made out with my now boyfriend (now age 21, then age 20) and her reaction was to crack up laughing, look me in the eyes and say at an unreasonably loud sound decibel, "Are you shitting me? Another one? You made out with another twenty year old? You gotta be shitting me! She made out with another twenty year old!!" At that point I realized that possibly it was getting a little bit ridiculous, but what was I going to do? Limit myself to only the boys my friends, family, and society deemed acceptable? Absolutely not! I would not ever limit myself just because other's thought I was wrong, not with my dating choices or with anything else. 

When I first began dating my current boyfriend I was sixteen, soon to turn seventeen, and he was twenty. More than handful of people (i.e. my parents) showed disapproval at the age difference but I am happier than I have ever been with any guy and am in the most serious relationship I have ever been in. With that being said I am in no way promoting forty year old men "falling in love" with sixteen year old girls, I am simply saying that my older guy habit seems to working well for me.

 

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

The good child

My parents refer to me as their "good child". I suppose in all honesty I would indeed be described as a good girl. Though I often contemplate whether I'm their good child or if I'm just really sneaky. The more likely reason why I am their good child is much less about me and the argument between whether I'm "good" or just sneaky and more about their previous child. The fact is that the expectations of behavior were set rather low by my older brother. Though he is a very good person he never exactly wore a halo or received special Good Kid lunch passes in middle school (which yes did exist, and yes I did receive). It was actually quite easy to reach Good Child of the family status, I got good grades in school and never presented the devious capability or desire to force my Spanish teacher into early retirement.
But when it came to being the good child, especially after I started high school. I would have preferred to be my brother. I would have preferred to have been the oldest so that I could I have no one to be compared to. I could be absolutely irresponsible and carefree and make my parents prematurely grey and they would have no idea what was hitting them because they would know nothing about teenagers. But as the second child I was completely weighed down with expectations and my parents had been around the block and knew exactly how to make me not behave like my brother. And so as the second child I was forced to become "The Good Child", or at least to be very very sneaky.