What I really wanted her to do was get a job. But when it became apparent that her life was just a little (a lot) too good for her to actually go work for pay, it was time to enforce the volunteer idea. Oh sure, she applied for lots of jobs, mostly online. Times are tough, blah, blah, adult competition, blah, blah. I know, already! But, there are always babysitting jobs and I did hear the words “Do not like to change diapers” come out of her mouth. Pay was offered for other jobs by relatives and I heard “Too busy”. So, you get my point...
I wanted to believe that all my parental teachings on altruism made a difference. I wanted to believe that I had instilled a sense of joy for helping others in my own offspring. I wanted to believe that all the damn volunteer work we did when they were little kids would have somehow STUCK. Or become a habit. Or at least seemed like a decent idea. Apparently not.
After repeatedly emailing her links to local volunteer opportunities, Facebook invitations for community service efforts, and “bringing it up” in casual conversation 4,657,023 times, I finally told Hannah she was grounded from all social activities until she had regular volunteer work. Now we’re getting somewhere.
She quickly reports that she is going to start volunteering at a place called “Project Life” with one of her friends. Project Life?!?! Whoa, Nellie - RED FLAG HERE. I tell myself this isn’t about me and proceed... So, I say, What will you do there? Oh, fold baby clothes and organize things that they give to help out single moms. Hmmm. I try, So, is it a pro-life-type place? Well, it might be, but what I am doing there is just stuff to help the single moms. Yep. I knew it.
So off she goes, along with two other friends she has now recruited to help out (these kids all need hours for their honor society club or something, it would seem). The first week seems innocent enough, indeed folding baby clothes and some other vaguely described tasks. Hannah is a hero for bringing friends and is being considered for a “volunteer coordinator” position during the school year. I don’t like where this is headed. No, I do not.
Week 2: Hannah comes home and informs me while I am cooking dinner that if you have sex outside your marriage you are 100% guaranteed to get hurt. I say, what kind of hurt? She says, oh, I can’t exactly remember what the video said - an STD maybe? That’s it!! The gloves are off. I go on a tirade about how the way to prevent an STD is to use proper protection and that having sex outside your marriage is a whole separate issue and what the hell are they doing showing them these videos, anyway. She says they wanted them to “preview” the videos. Brainwashing! So, I say, you are being brainwashed. And now I begin to threaten to picket the place while Hannah is volunteering. Gerd walks in on all this and gently, teasingly reminds me that I said she had to do volunteer work and did not dictate what kind of volunteer work she had to do. He is right. Ass.
Week 3: Now Hannah and I are joking about her volunteer work. She taunts me when she refers to the volunteer work. This was not at all what I had in mind. I begin to refer to Project Life as Project Anti-Choice. I ask Hannah if they pass out birth control there. Oh, no, they do not believe in birth control. Of course they don’t!!!! I say that my picket sign will have condoms hanging from it. Hannah reminds me that the girls she is helping ALREADY got pregnant and had a baby. I begin suggesting other volunteer opportunities. Gerd again reminds me that this is not MY volunteer work.
Week 4: Hannah tells me that they have fetus erasers at Project Anti-Choice. Fetus erasers? She goes on to say that she and her friends have this idea for a senior prank where they’ll order a bunch of the erasers and have them showing up in various areas of the school. This is where I should insert a comment about senior pranking and the trouble she could get into and doing the right thing, but all I can think is what does a fetus eraser look like? This is what it looks like:
Because, of course I asked that Hannah bring home a fetus eraser. Honestly, I was expecting it to be a tiny, hard rubber, obscure shape of something that vaguely resembled a baby. You know, the kind of things you stick on the end of a pencil. I was not expecting a soft, rubbery, quite large, probably-couldn’t-erase-anything FETUS.
What's a liberal-minded mama to do?
It’s a funny thing, raising kids. They are so much are part of us, yet they are their own people, making their own choices.
The fetus eraser, meanwhile, is nowhere to be seen...
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