Teenage drinking is like head lice

Ok, so it isn't the prettiest title, but it has to score points for honesty.

 Some people will never have to deal with it, some are shocked to find it in their own home, and for some it becomes a real problem.

As for me, I haven't had to deal with it yet as a parent. I know that some day it might find it's way to my children, but for now I'm just happy to pretend it's not out there.

As long as we're talking about honesty, the only time I give it much thought is when I'm writing about it.

(Teenage drinking that is, not head lice.)

Or watching a show where it seems to be thrown around in a gratuitous fashion.

If you've ever seen Gossip Girl, it seems any sixteen year old with a personal shopper and a fabulous hairstyle will be served martinis everytime they walk into a bar...

  

or a party...

 

or a limo...

Ok, I guess those are glasses of scotch, not martinis, but still.

And teen drinking certainly isn't sequestered to the obscenely rich.

One of my other favorite shows, Vampire Diaries, is littered with beer slinging field parties.

(I'm not sure if they are actually called field parties, but that's what we called them growing up in Vermont.)

Not that I ever went.

Or drank warm beer while the idiot boys tried to impress us by jumping through the bonfire.

Ahem - anyway the only thing these t.v. teens do more than drink and shop,

(or come back from the dead if we're talking about Vampire Diaries)

is have sex.

(now that is a whole other blog)

So why is it that I feel bad when my characters drink?

Maybe it's just the mom in me, the idea that I might be condoning it to my daughters and their friends that in a few years they can throw on a Valentino and kick back a few too many martinis...

Or maybe it's the daughter in me, afraid to admit that I am able to describe the effects so accurately...

Or maybe I'm just afraid that someone, someday, might read one of my books and come knocking on my door to blame me for malinfluencing (did I just make that word up?) their sixteen year old...

Of course if that ever happens I could always fling a martinini into their hand and invite them in for an episode of Gossip Girl.

Unless it was Thursday, in which case I would offer tham a beer (laced with vervain) and kick back for some hot, brooding, vampire action.

But whatever the reason, I do feel bad when my characters use fake i.d.s or red solo cups.

Not bad enough to rewrite the scene, obviously, but bad none the less.

 I suppose that's why, in my writing, it usually comes along with something bad. 

I wonder if the writers of GG or VD (yikes - that is not the best title for an akronym.) ever worried about their influence on over-privileged Manhatten-spawn and the field loving fang crowd...