The Boy Is Mine

Kind of an unsettling experience at my son's special-needs social group last Friday. My son was ... well, I'm going to say hit on by a fifteen-year-old girl who just kept coming up to him, taking his hand, and pulling him away from his friends. He knows her from school, he's a friendly guy, so he went with her, always drifting back to his friends when she set him free. She started with the hand holding, then moved on to putting her arm around him, then rubbing up against him a little. At one point, she dragged him behind a free-standing bulletin board where I couldn't see them, and I sped over there fast. I kept them on my radar as best I could, and at least one other adult in the room noticed what was going on and did the same.

Maybe part of my concern was that I remembered this particular girl from my son's elementary school, where I used to work in the library. She had problems with indiscriminate affection when she was in second and third grade, and it doesn't look like she's grown out of it. Unfortunately, she's doing it now with a teenaged body, and if she finds someone who's less oblivious to what she's up to than my son, she's going to get some indiscriminate affection back. I'm starting to see how so many girls on my son's special-education track have wound up pregnant in high school.

Since the activity was going in a well-supervised, parent-observed venue (as opposed to, say, a school dance with the lights off), it's easy to think of it as kind of cute. But really, it worried me on so many levels. For one thing, my son will be 18 in March, and then it won't matter whether the underage girl is hitting on him or not, he's going to be responsible for anything that happens. For another, his going off with the girl hurt the feelings of his friends, especially a girl friend who may or may not think she's his girlfriend, but certainly thinks she's got dibs. It's a lot of drama for what's previously been a fun Friday night out. Guess he's really a teenager now.