Between the ages of twelve and eighteen, I struggled just like any other teenager. I had to fight for everything, not only because I was the oldest, but because I also had the most over-protective parents in the world!
I couldn’t wear makeup so I felt like the plainest, ugliest girl in school. I couldn’t shave my legs so when the schools finally allowed girls to wear pants, I wore them all the time. One day, I started secretly using my dad’s razor, and all was going well until he started wondering why his blades were getting dull so fast. He became suspicious and when he confronted me about it, of course, we had a big argument about why I didn’t need to do everything the other kids were doing. My gosh, I didn’t want to do everything! I just wanted to do SOME things … just ONE thing at least, that everyone else did! But no, that was too much to ask.
With three daughters, my dad used to say that when the boys started coming around he was going to sit there with a shotgun. Yeah, right. I was doomed! It didn’t look like I was ever going to get a break! I thought I was the only one in the whole school who never got to go to football games, dances, parties, or anything. It just wasn’t fair!
Later, after my dad had passed away, my mom was just as strict and over-protective. I wasn’t allowed to go on dates (not that anyone would have asked me—being the plainest, ugliest girl in school (or so I thought at the time), and I still couldn’t go to our school dances or football games. I don’t know how many times my two best friends would come over and try to help me convince my mom into letting me go. Our efforts were useless as she wouldn’t budge in the least. Can you imagine being seventeen or eighteen and still having to be home when it got dark? I felt like a homely Cinderella, only I never got to go to the Ball!
However, the one thing I did get to do was go to Prom Night at Disneyland … not to the prom, mind you, but to Disneyland. Now why in the world my mom would allow me to travel over 100 miles or so with the same bunch of kids, but yet, wouldn’t let me attend a local school activity close to home, just didn’t make sense to me. But since she was willing, I wasn’t going to question it. I went with two of my best friends and had the time of my life!
Years later I would occasionally remind my younger sisters that they should be thankful that I had paved the way for them with my blood, sweat, tears, and misery. They, of course, were able to do everything that I was forbidden to do … go to games and pep rallies, join the drill team and cheerleading, date, go to dances, prom … the whole works! I think my mom was afraid that they might rebel and move away like I ended up doing. Well, I didn’t really rebel actually. I just got tired of everyone telling me what I couldn’t do, and trying to decide my future career for me—telling me what to take in college or what to be. I just decided that I was going to pursue my own dream whether they believed I could do it or not.
But I’m getting way ahead of myself here. Although I had struggled with a lot of things during this time, I still had plenty of good times as well. I may not have had a whole lot of friends at school, but the ones I did have were really close friends, and I still keep in touch with a few of them today. Thanks to social media I’ve also found others and was able to reconnect with quite a few long-lost friends from the past.
And, of course, years later, I realized that the reason my parents were so overprotective was because they loved me so much. It’s always hard to watch your first-born grow up and become independent, and it’s even harder to let them go out into the world where there’s so much bad influence. You’re just so afraid of the mistakes they’re going to make. But, that’s a part of life and the mistakes will hopefully make one a better person if they learn from them.