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Nina Gaby
The Thong Question

“The boys in our school only like girls who wear thongs,” says my daughter one day in the car. It is a random statement, out of nowhere. But she now has my attention.

We are transplants to Vermont, where the commutes are longer, the stars are brighter, and the kids are more precocious.

I murmur something indistinguishable from the undercurrent of the public radio station that underscores most of our long drives these days. My daughter is thirteen, which means she doesn’t talk to me as much as she used to. I am grateful for this piece of information despite the fact that it is going to drown out an interview on Fresh Air that I have been waiting for.

Buying myself a little more time, I fiddle with the volume button, reluctantly turning it down. How do I address her statement? When did our conversations begin to include the word “thong”? I am a woman who has spent fifty years trying to avoid anything that even resembles a thong. When she was little, we called them “wedgies” and they were a bad thing…

Excerpted from I Wanna Be Sedated: 30 Writers on Parenting Teenagers Copyright 2005 by Nina Gaby