Double Standard When It Comes To Underage Sex?: ABC News blurb, apparently comes with a story by John Stossel on 20/20, which I won’t get to see until well after it airs at home.

Interesting reading, though.

Reminds me of the time I was visiting my in-laws and they were telling me all the tales of Young Lazy Bones. They showed me the “gift” they gave him for his 16th birthday- a “rubber plant”, some silly little plastic plant that they’d stuck a bunch of condoms to.

At that time, his sister was around 16.

She did not get a rubber plant. She was not allowed to have her boyfriend in her room with the door shut. The in-laws always knew what she was up to and where she was.

So I quizzed my dearest love about his teenage years some more (because I knew from other things he’d told me that he was *ahem* a bit of a rule-breaker). He was doing “it” not long after his parents gave him that funny little plant. He was doing it in his room while my mother-in-law was at home, no less.

And the idea that his sister might be gettin’ it on with her committed, decent, hard-working boyfriend? Oh he HATED that. Guy was “too old for her”, too (two years older, for the record) and he regarded the whole situation with much furrowing of his monstrous eyebrows.

Now as I began to get to know my young sister-in-law (who is, incidentally, the same age as my oldest niece) I learned that she is a studious, hard-working girl who reminds me a lot of my own little sister (who is, incidentally, the same age as Mr. McSnide), but much more agreeable. Her boyfriend, who is now her fiance, was a good kid who worked (at the time) as a gravedigger. I like these kids! They are good kids, not jackass teens (even if young sis-in-law had her teenage girl moments of snottiness) and they seem to be genuinely in love with one another.

And apparently they aren’t doing the horizontal tango, but are waiting until they get married (in Fall of 2009).

Well. So they say. If they are or they aren’t is no concern of mine.

Even though this girl is 18 now and a full-time college student, if my in-laws thought she was doing the deed, their heads would probably explode.

My mother-in-law, within 10 minutes of meeting me for the first time, was traipsing around my house with a video camera, and popped her head into my bedroom and filmed the bed with the comment:

“And here’s Adam and Sally Anne’s bed, where they do the no-no”

(Oh yeah, that is his name, in case you didn’t know)

Of course, I was mortified for some reason, and laughed. It was weird.

But it illustrates the point I wanted to make with all of this rambling and parenthetical craziness, that I absolutely believe that there is a double-standard.

I plan to lock all my babies away in various attics/basements/closets during their teen years, regardless of gender. Everyone can be just like mommy, and wait until they are legal adults.

(I was 19 years old, if you’re nosy like that. And that means that I only just barely beat Lazybones onto the market. Not that I would have done it with him if we’d known each other at the time. He was WAY too young for me.)