Natural consequences

I believe in natural consequences, and try to implement them whenever possible with my own children. Lately, I've been looking for one of those natural consequences to put the kibosh on some behavior by one of my children (we won't go into details, but it's not something I'm finding an easy natural consequence to). Anyway, all this thought had made me think about my favorite natural consequence "punishment" from my own life, involving my first "true love" (yes, my husband knows all about this and he thinks it's funny too).

It will require a bit of prologue and epilogue. Bear with me.

I was 10 years old and in 5th grade. The 8th graders had lunch before us, and as we walked into the cafeteria, the 8th grade boys would be sitting on the heater in the hallway and sometimes talk to us as we walked in (thank goodness schools now do a better job of separating 8th graders from 5th graders!). Every day, this boy (we'll call him Andy because that's what his name was) would say to me, "hi cutie!" Every day, I would ignore him. He had bad acne, frizzy hair, and I really had no interest whatsoever in a smelly, ugly 8th grade boy.

Fast forward 3 years. My friend liked a guy on the high school football team. She talked me into going with her one day to watch him practice (yawn). I sat there with her, and after practice was over we waited down by the fence so the team would walk by us as they entered the locker rooms. She wanted to say hi to her crush.

So, we were just standing there watching the smelly guys walk by, and here comes this guy grinning from ear to ear. He was sweaty, but cute. I didn't recognize him.

"Hi cutie," he said, as he walked by smiling.

Ah, young love.

Well, that pretty much started my infatuation with Andy. Three years before, I couldn't stand the thought of him. Now, well, let's just say I thought about him quite a bit.

We started talking on the phone when we could get away with it. I started hanging out more at the high school (this was when I was still in middle school). Every chance I had, I'd see him. It was all really innocent though, really. I'd go to his games, he'd say "hi cutie" afterwards. That was about it.

One day that first summer, there was a dance across the street from my house at the stake center. I was 13. Usually 13-year-olds could not go to the dances...and this time they couldn't still....but I (gulp) lied to my parents and said they were letting 13-year-olds in, and could I please go since it was just across the street? Okay, they said.

I did go to the dance. Kind of. I hung out at the back door until Andy showed up, we danced a few times (the music was plenty loud out there) and then he said, "hey, I've got to take something to my brother's house. Want to go for a ride?"

Well, I knew this was not something my parents would approve of - but I figured hey, I've still got a couple of hours before the dance is over. No big deal, we'll just go on this ride and then I'll go home by curfew and all is well.

It would have worked, except a couple of my friends were also pulling this little ruse with their parents, and when they didn't find ME at the dance, they went to my house to get me....and thus started the "look all over town for the 13-year-old with the 16-year-old" event.

My parents knew we had a "thing", and they called his parents. "Dance?" his parents said. "He wasn't going to the dance tonight. He was going to the drive-in movie."

I'm sure THAT thought was happy for my parents. They had us paged at the drive-in to no avail. We weren't there.

We did go to his brother's house. We visited for awhile (they had just had a baby). Then we drove around town for awhile, then back to the church....only we didn't go back to the dance. We sat in his car in the parking lot, talking.

Now, I know you won't believe me just as my parent's didn't, but this was all on the up-and-up. We were friends. I admit I had a huge crush on him. He, being the much wiser 16-year-old, knew he'd better behave himself and he never so much as tried to hold my hand back then. We talked. A lot. We actually had some pretty cool conversations. It was innocent.

Having said that, if I were my parents, I'd be furious too.

We were in the middle of one of those conversations when I saw the famous maroon pinto zipping into the parking lot behind the church. I knew I was in trouble and immediately jumped out of Andy's car and into my dad's. I knew from the look on his face that he was extremely worried. I had no idea it would just get worse as we drove around to the front of the church and into our driveway, to see my mom and sister sitting on the fence in tears. Man, I knew I was in trouble. And granted, I should have been. I totally lied to my parents so I could be with this older guy, and if he hadn't have been a good kid I really could have been in a bunch of trouble.

My mom decided I needed some natural consequences for this. If I had so much free time on my hands to spend with him, perhaps I needed something else to occupy my time. There was a new gym in town, and aerobics classes were all the rage. Perhaps 5 days a week of aerobics (and riding my bike both ways, taking up a good 1 1/2 - 2 hours of my day) would be the fix. That's 2 hours that I could not be getting in trouble with Andy, and hey, I was open to it. (This was not my only punishment, but was a part). I even talked my friend (the same one I'd gone to that football practice with) into going with me.

We went for about a week, and then one day a couple of guys from the high school started trickling in. Soon her crush came in, and not far behind him, Andy.

Their football coach had required them to sign up for aerobics class as conditioning for football.

We didn't say LOL back then....but LOL!!!

So Andy took his place next to me, and my friend and her guy next to us, and we spent the rest of the summer taking aerobics with the very guys we were there to be kept away from. It was awesome.

Now for the epilogue:

Eventually, my parents carried through the next logical natural consequence - they moved our family out of state 6 hours away, where I spent the next 4 years pining away long distance for Andy in another state, and then in another country as he served a mission in Taiwan. We wrote for 4 years, and saw each other occasionally when I returned to our old town for a visit. After his mission, we found ourselves both sophomores at Ricks College (I had finished nearly a year of concurrent enrollment in high school). Finally, on equal ground. We dated some. We laughed and laughed about the natural consequences from 5 years earlier. The relationship ultimately didn't work out, although it took another good 5 years before we figured that out for once and for all. We would date, we'd break up. Date, break up. I went on a mission. I got home and thought maybe now was finally the time. I went to see him. Very similar to a night 10 years earlier, we sat and talked and talked and talked - and it hit me. I didn't love him anymore. I knew he wasn't right for me, nor me for him. It was as clear as day, and while I do think of him sometimes, I just look back on it all with a smile because I learned so much.

Also, it reminds me how terrified I am to have teenage daughters!