One of the most interesting websites doing the rounds on social networking sites is called ‘Things Parents Text’. For the uninitiated, it consists of weird goofy explicit SMSes received by disgusted/shocked embarrassed/or just bemused kids from parents who are either drunk/ stoned/ or obviously one sandwich short of a picnic basket.
The website appears to be one more way that young people have chosen to cope with their parents, who are for them baby boomers, known as ‘Generation Oops’! I’m talking about you and me and every one over the age of forty.
And unsurprisingly, the loudest and most disgusted groans on the website are reserved for parents who allude to their sex lives or text sexual innuendo. Let’s face it, we live in a world where parents are not supposed to have sex or be sexual beings. As kids when you really want to gross another kid out, you refer to some nature of sexual activity by his/her parents.
Most swear words are considered offensive for the same reason. And that’s because there’s an unwritten rule that parents ought to desist from sexual activity as soon as their kids are old enough to be offended by the thought.
But that was then. Today, in the brave new world of Viagra, hair weaving, knee replacement surgeries, dental implants, facelifts, Botox, disposable incomes, Royal Jelly jabs, Internet dating and quick divorces, who’s going to restrain the parents?
Today, 40 is the new 20 and 50 the new frisky.
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I know parents whose nocturnal lives are far wilder than anything their kids get up to. I have a friend, Mr P, a 50-something divorcee in blue chip shape with biceps the size of pistons. Mr P does everything in big numbers. Four Beemers, five factories, three kids, two girlfriends — all the same age or younger than his kids.
Does that bother him/ them?
Over a single malt (the lowest number in his life), MR P arranges his not-quite-there-yet six-pack on to his Versace designed sofa and sighs. “Look, I have a huge house, and my kids know my girlfriends stay over most nights. I mean, they’re not kids anymore; they do know I have sexual needs, right? But heck, it’s the one topic I have a hard time bringing up with them, even though we’ve done some wild partying together in Goa and Ibiza.”
Talk about the generation gap: Suave Mr P afraid to tell his 20-something kidsters that he’s up to some nooky down the hall?
“It’s not that,” he says coyly. “It’s just that we grew up in an age when our parents seemed really, really old,” he says. “I mean my mother at 50 looked like a grandmother — white hair, walking stick, hearing aid. My father at 50 behaved like a 70-year-old! It was almost sinful to think of them as anything else but holier than thou!”
So?
“So damnit, I’m embarrassed to bring up the topic of my sex life in front of my kids because we’ve been conditioned to draw a veil over the sex lives of our parents and I don’t want to offend them!” says Daddy Cool.
Ahhh.
Sanjana, a hip teenager with two sets of parents and stepsiblings from both parental marriages, couldn’t agree more with Mr P. Her response to parents who refuse to grow up is an eloquent eyeball roll to the ceiling.
“Like ya, I know that our parents are becoming younger and younger, and they’re all into gyming and shopping at the same shops we go to and the same nightspots that we party in,” she says laconically. “Like, you know the biggest compliment you can give my mum is that she looks like my sister! But you know what?” she says crinkling up her sweet Audrey Hepburn-like face, “we kids think it’s gross. They should act their age. And they’ve had their fun. And they should get off Facebook. It’s not meant for them. It was created by an undergrad for God’s sake…”
The sight of two Yummy Mummies in minis, well-toned legs on display at the Sobo deli we’re at threatens to further shatter Sanjana’s cultivated cool. Before she can say “whatever”, I make my escape.
But it’s well worth considering. Are we Daddy Cools and Yummy Mummies grossing out our kids? Is it time we acted our age. And the scariest of all thoughts: is it time we departed the dance floor?