The International House Of Dating
The Pandora household has hit a milestone. Both of my teenagers are dating. My 16 year old son has been dating his girlfriend since last March, and my 13 year old daughter got a “boyfriend” last month. In both cases, dating seems to mean a lot of texting and teen skate on Friday nights – for which Mr. Pandora and I are most grateful. And in my daughter’s case… it does not involve kissing. Call me the oracle, but I see a break-up on the horizon.
But what’s interesting to me is the fact that both my kids are dating outside their race. Honestly, I have never felt so proud of this generation. Not because they’re bucking “tradition,” but rather because they are forging the future. It’s so damn natural for them. And this isn’t an isolated situation. The melting pot of dating encompasses all their friends. It’s normal. So normal that the obligatory “brace yourself, Mom and Dad” conversation that we grew up with never occurred.
The kids are all right.
Old right wing white people? Not so much. No wonder they are having a hissy fit. They are facing their own extinction… and they know it.
Tags: racism
old right wing white people arent facing extinction, theres always a new crop right behind them.
When my son was little, he had some kind of vanilla/chocolate lollipop he was eating…and he turned to me and said, “Mom…this is kind of like people. It doesn’t matter what flavor on the outside, all the same on the inside.”
One of the proudest moments of my life.
Pandora, let’s just hope there are more of us doing the right thing than those producing new crops of the wrong thing.
Glad you and Mr. Pandora are not Katheryn Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.
Phil, the crop is shrinking. It’s also not as conservative. Young people’s view on gay marriage springs immediately to mind.
Ah… but Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner was ground breaking for its time. It paved the way for where we are now.
Pandora–I’m more upset w/ a 13 yo “dating”. When I get a hold of you…….:)
Relax, Venus. What she considers “dating” is texting (which she reads to me!) and going ice skating with approx. 20 friends from school. I drive her – and her girlfriends – and then pick them up.
If she thinks that’s dating… who am I to argue, and raise the bar? Works for me, and she enters HS next year.
In fact… all of her friends who say their parents won’t let them date are, in fact, dating… and lying to their parents.
We integrated back in ’86. Complete with marriage licenses, weddings and babies. I look more and more anemic with each passing year, and “family” event I show up for. But there is this one side of the family, that has the most resilient red hair–that amazes me. It keeps showing up, even in the darkest of couple combinations.
Eminent and respected authorities point to a common mother for all of us who must have migrated from the Great Rift Valley in Africa.
They call her Eve.
Our differences are only skin deep.
Culture may interfere with understanding.
LOVE,if allowed,will conquer all.
I am an old left wing white guy who in the past few weeks has attempted to hasten extinction :). P you and you’re daughter sound like a hoot:). However we live in a time of the worst institutionalized racism since the dawn of the 20th century. It is practiced with a smile and a pen (printer) no need for a club. And now we have 60 or so newly elected practitioners of this virulent form of racism. a generation of young black men and women are either in prison or in the probation system being bled of any hope and enthusiasm they may have. We as a society are in a bad place and spiraling towards far worse. I was lucky that i have had the tools and the contacts to free myself of the criminal justice system but we have folks who repeatedly are violated back to SVOP or Smyrna for charges that should have been resolved months or years back.The bright light of a black president has dimmed in the despair of reality. Sorry to be so cheerful.
jp, not to make the mood darker….. but even if young non-white kids could see Obama as hope to aspire to….. even if thy become president, they can still look forward ot unfair venomous attacks, and total lack of respect from a large part of the population.
That said, the Boenher Beck race is vanishing. Good riddance.
Pandora, kudos to the lil’ ‘doras.
Oh I can go waaaaay darker. Our society is skewed to racism and elitism at every level. we are gong into the toilet at an amazing rate.
Actually, I think this is their last hurrah. Kids – even conservative raised ones – have become very comfortable with other races and gay people. Not all, but a lot. Funny how the ones holding onto their racist ways are kinda laughed at. The teenage years have been a joy to experience.
granted but the racism here is cleverly disguised as tolerance
Back in the 60s and early 70s, we thought that America had learned the sad and immutable lessons of foreign wars without end and that Presidents were not above the law. Sadly, we were wrong on all counts.
Racism and oppression are still very much alive today in many parts of the country, even with the younger generation. Congratulations on your kids, Ms and Mr. pandora. Children like them are our hope for the future, and, remember, Hope was the only thing left in Pandora’s box.
Pandora—I don’t want to jinx the “remainders” in my house, but the ones transitioning to adulthood were great to deal with as teenagers (and I made sure I told ’em too). We’re strict parents, but I had really no big problems w/ the friends either. My bigger problem were the parents who thought they were the teenager–as in “their friend”.
Anyway, my worse age group to date has been toddlers. It’s a good thing they grew up.
BTW–in unabashed inhumility, my latest high school senior was just crowned Homecoming Queen last week–to all of our utter shock. So yea, the times are changin’—because that kid is no majorette or cheerleader.
Eminent and respected authorities point to a common mother for all of us who must have migrated from the Great Rift Valley in Africa.
They call her Eve.
Our differences are only skin deep.
Culture may interfere with understanding.
LOVE,if allowed,will conquer all.
Oh Jesus, Skipper. Get real! Love only conquers all in fairy tales. I speak from very bitter experience.
Well anon40–the only thing I can add, is it’s always something–because we humans constantly in our most inhumane way try to best for some reason. If it’s not race, it’s religion. If it’s not religion, it’s lineage and so on and so forth.
One of the biggest epiphanies I had was when a little child (bilingual) came to live with us, who’s mother was Puerto Rican. An opportunity presented itself for the child to be placed in a home where both parents were Mexican and bilingual. The birth mother refused the child to be moved on the grounds, she didn’t want “any Mexican” raising her child. Who’d thought? So it’s always something. I just know I don’t know all the pecking orders, but they certainly are there, across all sorts of demographic strata.
“Oh Jesus, Skipper.”
anon40- The Jesus you spoke of in your opening is a perfect symbol of the LOVE that could conquer all.
There are many others.
I take your point regarding fairy tales.
Yet, only dreams can sustain me.
Otherwise, my desires would consume me.
Now that I know of your suffering, I share in it, even o’er this strange ether through which we communicate.
My sincere wish for you is to, once again fall deeply in love, and have that love returned at an even greater depth so as to bury your past heartbreak forever.
In the 60s and 70s we talked the talk, and some walked the talk. These decades were important because we raised our children with that talk.
I am not claiming that racism doesn’t exist. It does. What I’m saying is that the kids today are very different from past generations when it comes to race. Even the way they discuss race is different. It’s not a taboo subject, and I’m amazed at how much humor they employ. Sometimes I have to bite my tongue because my generation would have never kidded about race.
But this humor they employ isn’t shallow, and while they all agree they are all alike, they also embrace (and laugh at) the differences.
And that’s what strikes me the most. This comfort level when discussing race, this acknowledgment that different races face different things. This generation doesn’t sugarcoat the problems, they tackle them head on – with humor and, yes, grace.
And it does give me hope, because it is different from the 60s and 70s. Those generations paved the way.
Go find a teenager to talk to. You might be surprised.
Intolerance and racism can’t be untaught. It dies with the bigots. The only way to stop it’s progression is to not teach it to the next generation, and wait for it to slowly die out.
agreed Brian – good call
I was worried when I started reading this post, but was greatly relieved afterwards. Pandora, I thought your kids were dating Republicans. Whew, that would be horrible.
When parents was young date but when they become parents, they don’t like that kinds can go for dating, funny but true.