I had a rather idyllic youth growing up here in what one of my childhood friends' husbands refers to as "Fantasyland." Silicon Valley is truly a beautiful place, and one of the things that specifically made Mountain View and Los Altos fantastic was the tremendous youth programs I was involved in at church as a teenager. Every three years or so the teenagers from all over our stake--6 congregations including people from Los Altos, Mountain View, Sunnyvale and Santa Clara--perform in a massive production full of great acting, singing, and dancing.
I was recently involved in helping with this year's production, but unfortunately had to drop out when I was diagnosed. Watching the show was a lot of fun, and I'd already been thinking how great it would be to get together with some of my old friends who are still in the area to watch the show we were in a half a lifetime ago.
So Saturday night the amazing woman who has been directing these since the first one back in 1989 agreed to let us come to her home and watch the play we were in as teenagers. We also had a post on Facebook about it and several people who've now relocated all across the country said they'd be digging out their own copies to watch it too. The production was "On Stage: A Tribute to the American Musical" with little snippets from about fifteen musicals. I had so much fun seeing people again and laughing at ourselves! One of my roles was "Little Red Riding Hood" from the play "Into the Woods" and it always floors me how there are people who still call me Little Red Riding Hood today. After watching my very loud singing and totally over-dramatic moves, my husband laughing it up beside me, I am thinking to myself, "This is how people remember me? Yikes!"
It was really great to relive those times though. What an amazing gift it was for a bunch of really nice teenagers who were striving to live high moral standards to get to know a lot of other great teens and to have a whole lot of good clean fun. Having now caught a glimpse of all the work that the leaders put into it, I feel even more blessed to have grown up with these kinds of experiences. I am looking forward to my children being able to have that as well. I think a big key to raising confident, moral, sober, well-adjusted kids is surrounding them with a number of caring adults who serve as strong examples and friends. I am so grateful for those who I looked up to and those who I hung out with as a teenager, who made it easy for me to stay away from substance abuse and all kinds of other things kids get involved in without thinking through the ramifications of their actions. My adult life has been full of blessings that are a direct result of choices I made as a teenager, which is part of why I love that age group so much and why I became a middle school teacher.
I am impressed with a lot of the teens I know today, many of whom face difficulties with great maturity and strength. I wish that as a society teens were given more of the respect that they deserve. It is an age when often people are treated like a child and expected to act like an adult. In reality, it is neither childhood nor adulthood, but a transition time, and thinking of it in any other way is not appropriate. Our teens need a delicate balance of guidance and independence. When I taught school the kids frequently admitted that good parents set limits and expect their kids to live by them. They didn't want their parents to actually know that was how they felt, but they said that was a measure of a good and caring parent. No matter how macho some of them acted, they were all vulnerable and it was SO apparent that their parents had a huge impact on their self confidence. They spoke of their parents often. I feel so blessed to have had such devoted parents who laid out clear guidelines. My mother would say, "Any time someone wants you to do something you're not comfortable with, just say no and blame it on me if you want to. Say your mom won't let you, you'd get in a lot of trouble." I rarely felt like I needed to use that line because my mom showed by example that her rules made sense. I saw how great life turned out for her and I wanted that for myself. It made it easy to resist any peer pressure that came along--and to be honest there wasn't much peer pressure for me because my friends all knew where I stood and they respected it. Many of them felt the same way I did. I am thrilled that I have such a great network of people with which I am now raising my own kids.
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