Twelve Year Olds

Twelve year olds.

They're a special breed.

Let's be honest.

Twelve year olds are why animals in the wild eat their young.

Everything is high or lows. Everything is tragic. Nothing is right. Even when they get what they want, it's not right.

Have I mentioned the part where MonkeyDo is twelve right now?

It's been fun.

Not really.

The worst part - possibly - is that I remember what it felt like to live in that brain. I remember being anxious and keyed up and angry and nothing and everything and having no idea what to do or how to fix it and - goddess help me - believing that I was acting perfectly normally because this was all just in my head, right?!?

I mentioned to MonkeySee that he had been like that at twelve, too, and that we all lived through that. He confided that, while he didn't really remember much about twelve, whenever he did remember something, he felt embarassed for himself.

Which is a pretty accurate description of how twelve goes down.

You can bet I am pretty fucking grateful that we seem to be seeing the light at the end of the twelve tunnel.

Because it's not all implosions, drama and whining, I thought I'd share with you some:

Compliments from a Twelve Year Old:

"Mom, you don't look stupid."

"That looks like something you'd make, mom, but not as pretty."

"Hey, you smell good!"

See? Twelve year olds can be kind of awesome, too.

Which is a good thing, because I don't think I'm even kind of ready for what comes after twelve years old.