Raising a Teen with love and ska

Oh My God I cant believe I logged in!! I havent been able to log into this account for so long! whaooooooooooooooooooooooo It didnt reject my email password combo making me doubt myself, my handwriting in my notes as to what password went to what. I've tried countless email/password/name combos over the course of the past few months and it was driving me wonkers.
I was giving it one more whirl before I created a whole new one today. I'm a happy camper right now..........ok......more like a happy blogger.

Ok what I was going to name my new blog that I thought I was going to create was "VENTING" and put a disclaimer at the top that any whining and complaining I do or did about my family was not to say I was a hater, but I was just venting. So many blogs I read sound like hatred or anger but I know its all venting.

I've been reading many blogs of late. Clicking randomly on other peoples lists of blogs they read. I didnt find one that dealt with raising teens. Lots of them deal with cute babies or toddlers. Lots of cute baby stories. Lots of rants and ventings. THere are even a TON of homeschooling blogs that do mention raising teens but none with what I was hoping to find. If any of you read a blog about raising teens I'd love to read it.
Please recommend it.

I have a 14 yr old male that I'm raising. He's an only child so of course this puts a different spin on raising him too. He gets the best and worst of Mom and Dad. Too much attention to his trivia.
Poor guy.

But then! He also gets first pick at everything and our yesses out number the no's. He gets all the attention that I see lacking sometimes in his friends households when frazzled parents have to divide what little attention they have to give among many.

The latest household drama: Ska. Skanking. Punk. Drums. Interpertive dance.

Let me expalain; Ska is a type of music, you can google it or go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ska to see what it is. The written explanation doesnt do it justice because it is really from what I've heard more like jazzy punk music but little screaming. Punk has more screaming and way more cuss words. I'm not a fan of listening to the screaming into a mike. I'm sorry if that upsets you fans of the screaming part but there it is. It sounds like vomitting to me. I am a loud vomitter. It reminds me of me with the stomache flu with great music in the background.
I took my son to his first ska punk concert last night. I LOVED it. I truly did. I did not like the vulger word/screamfest that some bands did but I did like the punk music and ska music. YouTube it if you must have examples. I stayed and scoped out what it was all about. I refused to just drop him and his friends off.

I didnt like the screamo songs and when bands sing with lots of cuss words I laugh. The bands last night were local garage bands playing for local teens so of course the lyrics were a bit unoriginal and kind of imature. But it made me laugh out loud how often they swore. I giggled at them, it was like they put every swear word they could think of into the song so that they could live it up with out getting in trouble under the guise of "its just singing".

I'll give you a specific example just to prove I'm not disdaining the punk rock band just because they vomitted alot, I mean, sang alot of screaming songs. 4 of the 5 bands had a song called "I F***ing hate our town" or "F*** our town", and one band had a great vomitting Sex song all about "F***ing P***y" and it was more about the F word than anything because that is the only word I really understood in the whole song. Song? Did I just say song? lordy. But the band playing the music itself was great. Very good for a garage band, I just didnt like the screaming vulgarities.

I guess I'm just old fashioned that way. Just give me non screaming lyrics that I can understand that are missing the F word and I might, just might like the song.

It was in an old VF hall the bands rented. The most amazing part was not the gaggle of children with black rimmed eyes and skinny jeans out smoking weed behind the bushes far into the parking lot, no.........the thing that attacked my heart was the huge amount of teens and preteens SMOKING CIGARETTES. Lordy people! I remember kids walking home from school when I was a kid sneaking some puffs but these kids were devouring these cigarettes in a manner that showed they smoke PACKS not a few puffs!

The interesting thing about being short and rather young looking is that a teen my sons age came right up and asked me for a cigarette!! I stood there stunned like a deer in the headlights, my son just said 'nah we dont have any' and his friend behind me offered her some snacks she had. But it bothers me. Really bothers me. Do these parents NOT SMELL THIS STUFF ON THEIR KIDS???
Am I this naive to not know this about the preteens and teens of ours in the world today? It really really caught me by suprise. The drugs I kinda expected and stayed just to see how inhibited they were in this place, but they all smoked cigarettes outside like old people hanging outside the bar on a Friday night.

The other thing that suprised me? The sheer fun of skanking. YouTube it. Its a fun dance kids do with ska music, its not a mosh pit. It is just like a more elaborate two step dance I guess. I almost got up myself to try it. Almost. But then I remembered that I'm old and my son would have DIED if I did.

But it sure looked fun. I didnt appreciate the kids hitting or pushing the skanking kids, that part of it is odd but that is what they do. And they spin each other and drag each other and bang into each other and fall into a football like huddle laughing through the bruises. Its all rather advanturous to me.
I loved it. Watching it. Feeling the teens exhuberance and all that bottled up energy let loose. God I wish I'd been able to do stuff like that with all my energy when I was a kid.

And yah the kids were glad I stayed if you are wondering. My son is lucky, and we are lucky that he has a tight group of friends that dont do anything to hide from a parent so as resident parent, they were fine with me staying in the back leaning against that ol Veterans Hall wall. By the trash. Until someone hawked a loogie and I almost hurled. I moved. Against another wall. By two boys holding hands and whispering to each other. Then they started spinning each other and giggling. I think they were on something with their shiney eyes and googly smiles. I just sat tight. I was there to watch my boy, but it sure makes me wonder...........

Well that is todays venting.......I hope I can log in again soon and do this again. Heh.

He is still playing drums like a madman and now playing for an interpretive dance group at the college. On trash cans. And PVC tubes. And a car rotor.....Fun adventures ahead!