Generation Gap

i'm confronted with exactly how old i've become whenever i look at my younger sister, Poopy (yes, it's a nickname, and ironically, that's her real nickname. I gave that nickname to her when I was about 14). i'm not going to reveal the means, but i somehow discovered my sister was sneaking out to meet up w/a college boy. and not a hello-i'm-a-college-freshman college boy but an i'm-older-than-a-college freshman college boy. and did i mention my sister is only sixteen?

not that i haven't done my fair share of hijinxes and shenanigans when i was her age, but regardless, it's completely different when it's your baby sister that's doing it. because of our age difference, my sister and i straddle the sibling relationship and the mother-daughter relationship (we're 11 yrs apart). we've never been able to cross that hurdle to being full-disclosure siblings who talk about boys we like and etc. so instead we've stayed in limbo where we spend most of our time teasing and goofing off with each other. just yesterday she hopped on my back for a piggy-back while we were in the supermarket. however, since my mom and dad work all day, whenever i'm home i make the meals for my sister, take her to her tennis lessons, set up dentist and doctor's appointments, etc.

this weird gray area made it really hard to determine what is the proper response to finding out she had snuck out to meet up/hook up with a college boy. my skin still crawls at the idea of her hooking up with that boy. and what does hooking up even mean now-a-days? it usually means something different to everyone, and since i have no intention of asking Poopy what it means to her my mind is just going to make up the worst possible scenarios. NOOOO.....

and then my head exploded.

ok, so it didn't. but i kind of wished it did. this whole situation's made me uber-confused. i'm obviously being very hypocritical since i probably did all the things she's doing now, so why does it bother me? i'm not her actual mom so why can't i be the cool-older-sister type instead of getting all worked up about it? should i confront her about it? do i have to give the talk?

the whole idea of the talk is also totally foreign. my family's never given the talk, ever. the way we deal with it is just hope that you'll learn everything you need to in college, when you're out of the house. back when i was a kid, that wasn't the smartest thing to do. however, in this day and age, i truly believe having the talk for informational purposes is completely unnecessary. in this day and age of television and movies, sex and all that accompanies it has become taboo-less. there isn't anything that you need to know that you didn't learn from Dawson's Creek, the O.C., Laguna Beach, and etc. And since these are reality shows, sex definitely isn't romanticized and most of the practicalities have also been explained. every show has an STD or abortion episode. look at True Blood. Jessica's a virgin forever and she explained that every time she has sex it's "gonna hurt like hell". hmm, that's not something that even the talk usually touches upon.

ultimately i had a mini-version of the talk with Poopy which was ultra-awkward but, according to most of my friends, necessary just to let her know that I knew something was up and that she had someone to talk to. I'm not so sure that the message came across that way but what's done is done. but it made me feel really really old doing it.