Our last guest today is Paula Chase Hyman, author of the Del Rio series. I met Paula a few years ago at a writers' conference when we were both starting out. She amazes me. Give it up for Paula!
The real bitch about becoming a parent, is you’ve got to sweat out about 8 years of your kids life (when they’re between 13-20) hoping that they don’t do some of the things you did as a teen. Some call this karma!
The clock is ticking on my eight years. I’ve only got one year in and every year I get more and more nervous wondering when I’ll get that call that my kid is locked up for doing something stupid or when we’ll sit back with her and laugh as she finally shares all the silly things she did without getting caught. I was a pretty good kid, back in the day, and I couldn’t come up with even one lie that I was justified to tell. The fact is, the lies I told as a kid were typical kid lies, told only to hide some sneaky, usually fairly innocent act that, if discovered by my parents, would have resulted in a punishment of sorts.
Some might say I was fortunate and I wouldn’t disagree.
But, as a form of therapy, here are a few things I lied about as a teen:
- Thanks to my friends weak throwing arm, having to tell my dad I had no idea where those wine and beer bottles at the edge of the backyard came from (sophomore year of college).
- Claiming to be at my friends house for easter break, also sophomore year of college, when actually I was only a few miles from home staying with my boyfriend
- Claiming not to know who ran into the mailbox and totally obliterated it (junior year of high school) even though I knew the pizza delivery guy had done it. Since it was too dark to see the damage, my friends and I thought he’d only nicked it. So the money the pizza guy gave us we all split and ordered more pizza. Oops!
See, all minor stuff. But here’s the thing – if my daughter can go through the bulk of her life only dealing with my rules as minor inconveniences to her life resulting in her lying to me about a few things while still emerging unscathed, I’ll be thankful. But we’ll see…I’m on the clock for another 7 years!
Paula Chase, author of the Del Rio Bay series. Her DRB characters get into way more juicy trouble than the author ever did. Visit paulachasehyman.com to find out what kind.
