Huh?

Hannah was at a birthday party Saturday night and the talk turned to parents as it often does (watch out ... your teenagers are busy discussing and comparing all the time). Hannah's friends suddenly were all in agreement that Tom and I are very cool and they'd move in with us in a second. (They say that because they don't live here, believe me!) I take this as a great compliment because a bunch of 16-year-olds will cut you down to size in a second (at least to their friends because these kids are all polite).

Rose is dumbfounded by this sudden status. She keeps saying, "They have met Mom and Dad, haven't they?

Yeah, I don't get it either because they have met us. We are the usual, uncool, overweight, graying, rule enforcing, stick-in-the-mud parents. Tom is the one who suddenly sees a connection between a school story and the Russian revolution and delivers a world history lesson at dinner ... or who goes and gets the Oxford English dictionary so we can all talk about the roots of a certain word. I am the "on fire" Catholic convert mom who makes everyone pray before dinner and then tells little Padre Pio parables to the philosophy-crazy, not-sure-if-he-believes-in-God boy having dinner with us. Or the one who suddenly stops and gives a lecture on keeping your virginity to a kitchen full of girls who are just getting a snack (you can imagine the story they were telling to make me suddenly deliver that little bomb).

The only thing that we can figure is we are interested in these kids and enjoy talking to them. We treat them as people who mean something to us. It's nice that they recognize that on some level. And it's sad that they don't get it in enough other places.