>A Parenting Horror Story, Just in Time for Halloween

Birthday parties are big in our family (at least with the older girls- the younger ones will never have a thousand dollar pony-and-clown-and-magician-extravaganza, so help me God), and my oldest stepdaughter’s 17th on Saturday night was no exception.

12 girls came first to our house for cake and presents, then went on to a downtown haunted house before catching a midnight showing of the “Rocky Horror Picture Show.” As you know from the last entry, Hubs and his ex chauffered and chaperoned everyone from point to point and stayed with the group to make sure nothing happened. It was carefully planned and perfectly executed and should have been the party of the year. And, well, it was. But not in the way we’d expected.

When Hubs rolled in at 3am with an SUVful of sleepy girls, I woke up and waited for him to come to bed.

“How did it go?” I whispered when he came in the room.

“It. Was. Horrible,” he said.

“What?” I said, sure that he was joking. I had talked to him just after the haunted house portion of the night, which had been a huge success. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Lindsay, it was so raunchy and disgusting. There was a preshow before the movie and the things that were said were absolutely mortifying. I have never been so embarrassed in my life.”

We are (obviously) not overly strict parents. We believe the girls need to be exposed to a certain amount of things before they leave home, while we’re still there to talk to them about what they’ve seen and heard. But when Hubs told me some of the things that were said, my jaw dropped. The whole thing was designed to shock, and I guess it takes a lot more to shock people these days than it used to, because it was way beyond anything I had ever heard of happening at a Rocky Horror event.

Hubs asked 17 if anyone wanted to leave once the event got underway, but she said no. It wasn’t visually upsetting (there were plenty of men- and women- dressed in lingerie, but everything was covered, so I think older teenagers can handle that); it was the things that were said that made it awful. Afterward, Hubs apologized to the girls, nearly all of whom we know very well. For their part, they likened it to hearing the boys at school tell dirty jokes. But still. We are appalled and dismayed to have been the ones to expose them to that.

I’m not writing about this to hear criticism from anyone. I’m just so, so, so glad I wasn’t there and put in Hubs’s position of making a decision to stay or go. I’m not sure what I would’ve decided. Making everyone leave would have screwed up 17’s birthday party and embarrassed her. Staying was equally horrifying. There simply was no graceful way to handle things. I doubt the girls heard anything at the show that they haven’t heard before, but still. Aargh.

I suppose I’m writing about this embarrassing incident because really, it’s imperfect parenting at it’s finest. It’s the kind of thing I don’t want anyone to know about, and at the same time, want everyone to know about. For all our worrying and our planning, our hands on parenting, our care and concern, shit. still. happens. And it makes my skin crawl to think about it.

And so, the moral of this story, I guess, is this: If you’re thinking of taking your teens to the Rocky Horror Picture Show?

Don’t.

This post originally appeared on Parents.com.