teenagers

In a purely coincidental act of fate, in my work I have been blessed to be working with many teenagers, all of whom I adore, in all of their interesting teenagerness. I also have one of those teenagers living in my home, she is fifteen, beautiful, quirky, artsy and well, a teenager.
Sometimes in my homeschooling world I feel like I need to apologize for her in all of her teenagerness. No, she is not a sheltered child, she does not prioritize her life around her family or wear long skirts and go to church on a weekly basis. Occasionally I can talk her in to coming if there is the promise of food afterwards and sometimes she does come just for the hell of it (no pun intended here).
In our homeschooling journey she has been the kid who has gone to school for most of her school years. She was pulled out this year for reasons I will not bore you with now. In our homeschooling world people are somewhat reluctant to be around this child.
This is so funny to me. I am wondering how this will be different for our other children or if it will be different at all. We are not raising children that may want to hang out with us all the time. I was so happy to pick Molly up from the train station yesterday after she had spent the day at Harvard Square with friends. She looked so happy and confident and fun getting off of the train and making her way in to the car. I was glad to know that she can navigate the trains around here and that she prides herself on her job and her college classes. She likes to cut her hair and dye it fun colors and listen to music and paint all over her walls.
She likes boys and likes to be with boys. She swears out in the world. She does not swear around us but I am fairly certain she does out in the world. She is probably going to experiment with things that make me cringe and fear for her wellbeing.
However, I really trust her. I really like her and I get really aggravated when people say not nice things about her. Especially adults.
Anyhow, the reason I am rambling is because this weekend I got myself a MP3 player and I have been playing with it and using Napster and just generally downloading like a billion songs which I think is going to be free and if its not I'm really screwed. It said free for a week though:)
Anyhow, I have been downloading all sorts of music from my teenage years and Gary pointed out to me last night that the reason I like working with all these teenagers so much is that alas, I am a teenager.
I think he may be right.
I like to hang out with boys (I've just narrowed my choices a little) I swear, I rebel against authority like all the time and I like to listen to the Killers really loudly in my MP3 player.
One time when I had an IPOd (before I lost it last year (yeah, I lose things too) I was running on the treadmill next to this really nice man and I was listening to "Lose Yourself" by Eminem and he says to me, "wow, that is interesting music." I smiled politely and told him that my teenager had put that on my Ipod.
I lie sometimes too.
I think the most redeeming thing about my teenager is that I believe that she has her core values in check. She will help the little old lady cross the road, she knows unconditional regard, she will stand up and tell someone they are full of it if they are. She is stunningly beautiful and she knows it. She is a riot and she knows it. And she is slightly trouble and I think she knows that too.
I guess I am too, sometimes, I've just honed my skills in this area.