Jeez...she's running for prom queen, but refuses to go to prom with a date...lol. WTH

[BusynMember]

Jumper is different (cough) from other girls her age. After her experience with J., which is long behind her, she has decided that dating is a big problem and she doesn't want a boyfriend at all. She has tons of guy friends and one guy she is so close to that she and he get teased all the time that they are going out, but the truth is, they are just extremely close friends. She has gone out on a few singular dates with two different guys and decided she didn't want them as boyfriends because "I need my space and if you have a boyfriend, he expects you to be tied to his hip." She also says, "After all, I have my sports and I'm not exactly sitting at home and I'm ONLY sixteen." Also, "If I go to prom with one guy, I can only dance with him and I want to dance with EVERYONE!" Ok, ok, ok, I get it!

The thing is, Jumper is running for prom queen and has a great chance of winning. It is basically a popularity contest and there are one or two who are also in contention, but she is the one everyone thinks will win (that would be really cool...first African American girl in our small town to ever win Prom Queen). Although the guy she is running with, a very good friend who is extremely handsome, will look great with her when they walk down the aisle, she has no desire to be his date and he asked somebody else for the prom. You can run with somebody without being his date.

A lot of her friends, boys and girls, decided to go alone, but she's running for prom queen! When I tell her just to get a friiend to take her so that she has a "date"...a friend who won't care if she dances with everyone there, she just laughs at me and says, "No! I don't WANT a date. I could get a REAL date if I did." She did this for Homecoming too and we have pictures of her with about twenty guys!!! And she really DID have a blast...but...

You ever hear of a girl running for prom queen without a date...lol? She is NOT covering up being upset. She is not upset at all. She is sooooooooo excited about prom and really does NOT want a date, but I really thought that to run for prom queen you had to be with somebody for the event.

Guess I'm old and outdated :/ You ever hear of this?

 

[1905]

Good for her! I think she's awesome. I don't think the king and queen need to be dates to each other.

 

[Hound dog]

Yup. Happens here quite a bit.

Good for her.

 

[HaoZi]

Good for her for being empowered and knowing what she wants and going for it!

 

[DDD]

Life "ain't like it used to be" MWM. Jumper is a great example of independence...and evidently, friendly warmth. I am proud of her. She's not going to end up in the back seat of a car with all that awkwardness. If Jumper is HALF as self confident as she seems to be..........YEAH, Jumper! If I could vote, lol, I'd vote for her. Hugs DDD

 

[buddy]

good for her! what a great girl.

 

[BusynMember]

LOL! Thanks. I'm sure she'll like your responses. I keep teasing her to get a date and she rolls her eyes and says, "MOM, I DON'T WANT ONE!"

I'm so old. I thought you had to have one to run for prom queen.

Jumper is a very good kid. I have my difficult children (35 year old Manchild is foremost right now), but Jumper was a true Gift from God. She knows what she wants and nobody (not even me) can change her mind and she seems to have a good idea of who she is. About prom queen: "I hope I win, but if I don't I hope S. or K. win because they're my friends and I'll be so happy for them." Me: "Not jealous?" Jumper: "Nope, they're my friends. Why should I be jealous? I'll be happy for them."

After Sportsfan, Scott who walked out on the family, the years of Julie's drug use and dealing with Sonic's autism, Jumper is really easy to raise. Don't get me wrong. I'm proud of all of them (although I have my moments with 35), but Jumper is just very special. It's hard to explain.

 

[DammitJanet]

Even in my kids prom they had kids who went like that so that was about 10 years ago. I know it seems odd because at our ages we would have died to go alone. I didnt even go to my Prom. Well, I stayed a second until we got kicked out because we were difficult child's...lol.

I think Jumper is a great example. She wont be the girl Steubenville OH. I am proud of her. I hope she has a blast.

 

[BusynMember]

Janet...lolol! Well, I was a difficult child too and although I didn't even WANT to go to prom (I thought the idea of prom was dumb) I did consider going with a bunch of other difficult children who wanted to crash prom wearing sloppy shirts and blue jeans...lol...but I didn't go through with it.

Sure seems like dating is different now, in all seriousness. When I was a kid, back when dinosaurs walked the earth, you could go out on a date with John on Saturday and then spend time with Tim on Sunday. You didn't have to only go out with ONE guy. It helped keep intimacy to a minimum too, at least for me. I didn't want anything to do with sex before marriage (canned laughter here). NOW, according to Jumper, if you decide you are "official" you don't EVER cheat (she thinks cheating is akin to murder!) so you are stuck with one guy. And that does seem to be how it is at our school at least. If you are dating somebody t hat means you are what we used to call "going steady" and that's not how I remember dating at that age AT ALL. And, if this is the case, no wonder so many girls end up sexually active. They spend all their time with one guy that they are attracted to. (sigh)

How times change!

 

[DammitJanet]

MWM,dating sure has changed. It used to be that we dated and some people were going steady and had serious boyfriends. Normally if you had a very serious boyfriend you might have sex and of course you had girls who were loose and had sex with boys easily but that wasnt everyone. Now it seems that girls consider the actual act of intercourse sex but oral sex isnt sex and they do that instead of shaking hands! What peeves me off is that it isnt mutual. Boys dont return the favor. You hear about groups of girls sitting in circles leaving a lipstick ring but the boys certainly arent trading places. Ugh. I blame this on Monica.

 

[BusynMember]

Well, I know it's been going on since before Monica and Jumper doesn't even know who Monica is, but it's true that many girls have very early sexual contact now...middle school isn't uncommon. One year a twelve year old boy got a fourteen year old girl pregnant at our All American school. Everyone was shocked. The twelve year old looked maybe ten and acted even younger. His mother kept the baby.
I think Jumper wants no part of this and it's another reason she is not interested in a boyfriend. Because, as you said, boyfriend these days usually means it's the ONLY person you date and you get close and he expects a lot...there is almost always sex. She isn't ready or interested.

 

[susiestar]

I think you are raising an AMAZING young woman and you should be very proud of her. She is herself, she knows herself, and she knows what she is not ready for. She seems to truly ENJOY being herself and that is a rare and special thing.

Around here, as far back as my own prom, having a date was not the big thing. I never did know how people ran for prom or homecoming queen/king or why anyone wanted to. NOT saying it is/was bad, just htat I didn't have enough interest in it to even find out about it all. Or vote one way or six others on the issues, lol. I know several of my friends's parents were VERY upset that their daus did not have dates, but most of them were that way by choice. Maybe 3 or 4 of 30 or so of my graduating class that went with-o dates really wanted them. I didn't even want to go to the dance because at our school, at that time, it was a bunch of kids getting drunk and stoned and trying to pretend they were not while laughing at how stupid the adults were to think they were sober. I went, because the girl taking photos for the school paper was home throwing up. As soon as I got the pictures I needed, I was GONE. SPent the rest of the night sitting in the car outside a hotel. Our principal got all the hotels in town but one to agree to refuse to rent to anyone who lived in town that week, or anyone who was there for the weekend but was under 20. The other hotel had a TON of business that night, and regretted it. WAY too many high school parties, too many parents who bought booze for their kids, and kids being idiots.

I got GREAT photos of about 1/4 of our school being hauled out by the cops. Whole thing was totally hilarious to the ten of us who were sitting there with cameras. And the cops couldn't stop us from taking photos. Not that they tried, being as the godfather of one of my friends was the sheriff.

You have a great daughter. Let her enjoy herself and have fun. She has PLENTY of years to deal with the whole boyfriend mess. She is a strong, smart young woman who knows herself, has priorities that are in pretty decent order, and she wants to enjoy herself in some fairly healthy ways with-o the hassle of some guy thinking he should know what she is doing and where she is all the time.

Even if it WAS strange to go with-o a date, if she has fun, breaks no laws, hurts no one, what is the harm?

 

[BusynMember]

Thanks, Susie. I actually was very rebellious and had no interest at all in school activities and I dated older boys so the prom was a big nothing to me. I didn't go because my boyfriends were always older. Strangely, in spite of this, I also never had any sex. I used to make fun of people who ran for homecoming or prom queen (in my head) and also thought cheerleaders were silly. Rebel was my middle name, except that I didn't do drugs or drink or have sex...that was also a part of rebelling since most kids I knew did all those things and I wanted to be different. But Jumper isn't anything like me THANK THE GOOD LORD! I also had a slew of mental health problems and no self-esteem.

At this smaller school, it's a HUGE deal and everyone goes. Or I don't know of anyone not going. We mainly have a bunch of close-knit fairly conventional kids, but lots of them don't take dates.

And for dates, last night my daughters very best friend on earth, a boy, asked her to prom. I had known he was going to do it because I'm friends with the mother. He is actually not just very handsome (although shy with girls), but not at all aggressive about sex and he has had a big crush on Jumper for a long time and they do everything together. The mother is very sweet and she is afraid Jumper will say "no." And, of course, her son will feel bad. I am hoping Jumper can say "no" in a way that they can still stay friends because their friendship is amazing. I hope that when she finds out that he likes her in that special way, she can still be his friend. They do everything together. There are no negatives to their friendship...they have a blast together and are always there for one another.

But to Jumper, the point of Prom is to be able to be free, to dance with anyone you like, and to not be tied down to one person. And she most definitely won't go out drinking...she looks down at getting drunk and doing drugs, being the athlete and all. She is the only child I ever had that I really don't worry about because the worst trouble she has ever been in is talking back to a teacher because he tried to stop her from scaring a bully away from a younger child. And she doesn't lie (she will admit when she does something wrong almost defiantly) and she doesn't hide anything...we are FB friends and she doesn't care if I spot read her cell phone and she stays away from the wild kids.

I hope she doesn't decide to go wild in college. She's a logical thinker. I can't see her going too far off the edge. Of course, you never know, but I'm enjoying her right now.

 

[HaoZi]

Oh that behavior was definitely going on before Monica because I remember some girls doing that stuff in my middle school years - but the boys did return the favor where I lived, lol. At least the ones I knew and heard about.

 

[BusynMember]

Wow! The boy asked her to prom and she accepted.

"He is the only person in the world I couldn't say no to."

 

[susiestar]

She is wonderful. ESPECIALLY because she KNOWS how much it would hurt her best friend if she says no. I hope at whatever times she chooses to get married, she marries her best friend. Whether that is this guy or she meets someone in college or later who is her best friend, that is one of the greatest things in life.

 

[TerryJ2]

Woo hoo! Let us know what happens on The Big Night. I can't wait!

 

[BusynMember]

Thanks, guys. Unlike J., the older boy who had so many problems he could write a book on them, this boy is eight months younger than Jumper and from a very nice family where all three boys are doing really well (one is in college and he still stays close to home). The mom is a single mom but absolutely devoted to her boys and LOVES Jumper, which is a nice switch from the other boy's family. The boys in that family are not overlly sophisticated or into drugs or drinking and are homebodies. Like Jumper, the boys are all athletes. Her date is a twin and his twin is a bit better an athlete than he is and he's a little insecure. It's cute how Jumper kind of goes over there to make him feel better when he's down about something. His mother is getting remarried and the boy is a little upset about it, even though the man treats all of them like gold so Jumper tries to talk sense into him...lol.

I feel much better about this prom date than I felt when she went with J. Actually this boy is also a J. with a different name...lol.

Terry, I'll post pictures for you Now she is RUNNING for prom with somebody else...he's a very handsome boy her age who is a player and is sexually active, and you'll see her with him too, but he is not her date. The kid with the braces is her date...lol.

 

[trinityroyal]

MWM, I am so PROUD of Jumper. Both for holding strong about not having a date, and then agreeing to have a date so as not to hurt her friend's feelings.

She is an amazing young woman. I have a feeling she won't run wild in college. Jumper seems very clear-headed about her goals in life, and doesn't want to get derailed. Perhaps seeing her older siblings struggle has allowed her to learn from their mistakes rather than having to make her own?

And going to the Formal (my high school's equivalent to Prom) without a date was not a big thing. For my Grad Formal, many of the girls had dates, but several of us invited friends who were part of our larger social group, and we just had a big party. Since it was a girls' school, we had to invite boys otherwise there wouldn't have been any at all. We rented a city bus for the evening, so that we could all travel together to the various before- and after-parties. The night was a blast.

I think Jumper will have a great time, and given the culture in her school, I think her decision to not have a boyfriend is a very wise one. If she's not ready for sex, then keeping herself out of situations where she's more likely to be pressured for it seems like the right choice.

Hoping she wins the Prom Queen Crown!
Trinity

 

[BusynMember]

Thanks. I'm starting to think she does like her date. We'll see what happens. She spends all of her spare time with him. Time will tellj. At any rate, I'm sure she'll have fun with him.