EDIBLE WORDS DON'T ALWAYS KEEP KIDS AWAY FROM ALCOHOL

I remember when I ate my first words regarding what I would and wouldn't do
when I had children. It was in 1984, a scant 72 or so hours after our son
was born.

Having proclaimed months earlier that disposable diapers seemed like an
incredible waste of money, and that we would use cloth ones (with
disposable diapers only for trips and emergencies), I quickly realized that
we would pay any price and bear any burden to avoid ever having to use
cloth diapers.

Such is the lot of parents: to eat many, if not most, of the words they
said about what they would never do or permit their children to do. You say
those things ("My child will never sass me," "We would never spoil our
children," "Our kids will never do such-and-such") when you're certain that
you've got the parenting thing down pat -- which is to say, before you've
acquired some actual offspring.

That is why I'm somewhat hesitant to bring up last week's big story about
the students from McGill-Toolen Catholic High School who got busted on
their way to the senior prom. I have always said (and, from time to time,
still say) that my children would never be teenage wildcats, drinking and
smoking and helling around in expensive cars, with too much money and
freedom and not enough common sense. They are still young enough to force
me to have to eat my words.

And yet, somebody has to ask what needs to be asked: Where were the
promgoers' parents? Were they unaware of their kids' plan to hire a van and
an adult driver, and load the vehicle with beer, hard liquor, marijuana and
even a little cocaine? In Mobile, a community notorious for teen drinking,
that would be considered a relatively minor lapse in parental attentiveness.

Worse -- much worse -- would be if the parents knew about the plan, and
condoned it, and perhaps even helped the kids acquire the contraband.

I'd like to think the former is the case, and that clever teenagers
hoodwinked their not-so-clever parents into thinking that transportation
was all they had in mind. But when I'm tempted to believe that scenario, I
remember the Alcoholic Beverage Control agents who, year in and year out,
refer to teen drinking as "epidemic" in south Alabama.

The ABC agents know, and aren't afraid to say, that often times it IS the
parents who are buying liquor for their kids, or allowing them to attend
unchaperoned parties at which beer and booze flow freely, or allowing them
to stage such parties at home.

Not that the kids are innocent. Even if they don't condone underage
drinking, some parents do not -- or will not -- understand the anatomy of
teen parties in upperclass Mobile, where kids call each other on their cell
phones to spread the word that so-and-so is having a party.

A friend of mine whose children graduated from McGill a few years ago still
recalls the nightmare party at her house in the country. "There were
supposed to be about 50 kids," she said. "And at 8 o'clock, that's how many
were there. But by 9 o'clock, there were at least 100 kids, and by 10 or
11, there must've been 200 kids from all over Mobile.

"They brought 12-packs of beer and grocery bags of liquor. They didn't even
try to hide it. The next morning, our pasture looked like something out of
Woodstock. We felt so violated. I still hate to think about what could have
happened. We were lucky, I guess."

We've been lucky, too, I guess, in that thus far our two teenagers haven't
fallen in with fast-living, hard-drinking crowds. Other factors may
contribute, too, including the fact that we live over in Baldwin County;
much of their time is consumed by commuting.

They are also handicapped by our not being rich, which means that they have
to share a 20-year-old car, don't carry much more than pocket change and
lunch money, and don't have cell phones.

Come to think of it, didn't I always say, back before I had children, that
I'd never let my teenagers run wild?

But spouting empty assertions is not nearly as smart a way to deal with
nightmare parties as the one my friend came up with: After her personal
Woodstock, she made a promise that as long as she lived, she would never
host another teen party.

Thus far, her words have proved themselves inedible.

If only all parents were as determined.