In which I blog about turning sixteen

I recently did a guest post for Books Over Boys about turning sixteen for her birthday bash. 

Please take a few seconds to wish her a happy birthday by clicking HERE

And here is my post. Enjoy. It's rather odd.

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I’m glad I’m not turning sixteen now. Because really, if that Sweet Sixteen show was on air when I was turning sixteen, I would have pitched a fit. Where was my BMW with the red bow? Where was my famous band singing happy birthday to me? Where was P Diddy? I didn’t get any of that.

Parent fail.

Okay. Maybe they didn’t fail at the whole parenting thing. They did let me write poems on my walls in permanent marker.  And that’s pretty epic. Those poems sucked. And I haven’t ended up in jail yet.

But I digress. Thinking back—way back—to my days as an almost-sixteen-year-old, I was a weird kid. I was grunge—before it was cool. My hair had every color of the rainbow in it. My pants were a mandatory three sizes too big. I used a men’s tie to hold them up.  And to top that off, I used baby powder to make my face as pale as possible. I tried to do dreads once. It didn’t work. My poor mother would actually buy me short skirts to just get me out of the baggy clothes.

She would say to me, “Jennifer, how can you ever expect a boy to like you when you look like that? I can’t even tell you’re a girl.”

And I would respond with (and yes, I was a snarky kid), “But mom, if a boy likes me this way, then at least I know they aren’t after me for my body.”

No parent can argue with that kind of reasoning.

So I was like a goth-grunge hippie or something. I wore T shirts that said things like “Screw the Establishment” or something ridiculously rebellious.  And looking back, more than my fashion sense is kind of disappointing. Why? Because I was too cool to get caught up on the whole turning sixteen thing. *Rolls eyes. Gah. I was an annoying kid.

When I turned sixteen, I couldn’t wait till I turned eighteen. When I turned eighteen, I couldn’t wait till I turned twenty-one. When I turned twenty-one, I couldn’t wait till I turned twenty-five. When I turned twenty-five, I wished I was turning sixteen again. 

Wait. What?

Yes, you read that right. When we’re younger, we spend so much time wanting to be older and when we’re older, we spend an indecent amount of time wanting to be a teenager again. And one of the things I wished I did? Slowed down, slowed down and allowed myself to enjoy the greatness that turning sixteen is.  It’s a huge turning point in your life. You’re not a tween anymore. You’re two years off from graduating high school. You can drive now. You can get a job without violating child labor laws. You should have a party. (Disclaimer: a totally responsible party. Of course.)  Make the day memorable. Make it so that your fifteenth birthday was so last year. Eat cake. Lots of cake. You won’t have that metabolism for much longer. USE IT BEFORE YOU LOSE IT.  If you’re a girl, wear a crown. If you are a boy, wear a crown, too. It’s your sixteenth birthday for crying out loud. Have fun. Most of all make it a day you remember.

Because I can’t even tell you what I did on my sixteenth birthday and that makes me a little sad. Probably listened to a mash-up of The Cure and Marilyn Manson while bemoaning the horrors of life or something.

So when you turn sixteen? Have fun. This is a cliché saying, but a true one: You only turn sixteen once.

Oh. Yeah. And a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Momo!