Going to Mexico with Malia

I've been trying to imagine what sort of parent would allow their 13 year old daughter to go to Mexico with her friend. I can't think of a single one of my friends who would have been allowed to go. Back when I was 13, we didn't get a spring break unless you count Good Friday as spring break. And some years we didn't even get that if we had too many snow days to make up.

Malia and her friends going to Mexico is utter nonsense. If I were 13 and one of her friends who were invited to go, the trip wouldn't happen because my mother would have stopped it.

The problem with trying to put my 13 year old self into this situation is that it would never have happened. Not because Malia and I wouldn't have been friends, I lived nowhere near D.C. But because, when I was 13, parents had more sense and they actually parented. Something that seems to have been lost somewhere along the line. And my mother would have laughed thinking there was a punchline somewhere. We didn't know anyone who went to Mexico.

But this is how I imagine the conversation would have transpired had I been a friend of Malia and we actually got a spring break:

Me:  Mom, I got invited to go to Mexico with Malia for spring break. Can I go?

Mom: The country?

Me: Yes, the country. What other Mexico is there? Geez. (eyeball roll)

Mom: No! Not at 13 you're not. Thirteen year olds don't go to Mexico for spring break. Thirteen year olds don't go on spring break.

Me: But all the other girls are going.

Mom: You aren't all the other girls. If all the other girls jumped off a bridge, would you? Who the hell would take their kid to Mexico? (said to air) I'm not going to Mexico so you aren't going to Mexico.

Me: It's just us girls going. Malia's dad is paying for it and he told her she could take her friends.

Mom: Are you out of your mind? By yourselves? You're not going to Mexico. It's not safe for adults never mind a group of 13 year old girls. Parents aren't going?

Me: But there will be plenty of secret service guys going with us.

Mom: I don't care if there are a hundred secret service guys, you're not going and that's final.

And my 13 year old best friend would have been standing right there with me for moral support and would have had to answer the question: "What did your mother say?" To which she would have replied: "We haven't asked her yet."

At this point my mother would have been on the phone dressing down Moochelle about allowing 13 year olds to go to Mexico which would have included a couple of "Who the hell do you think you are? You don't tell 13 year old girls they can go to Mexico." Unless it was Mr. Obama who answered the phone then it would have been even more entertaining because that conversation would have included the part about how much it would cost the taxpayers and she would have tossed out the figures of the salaries of 25 secret service agents, the cost of flying down there, and all the other expenses involved.

And I would have been mortified as I ran across the road to my best friend's house to ask her mother where the conversation would be eerily similar.

If after all of that, the trip was still a go, the conversation between my mother and the other mothers would have left Malia to go alone, thus halting the trip, I would think. My mom would have been communicating with the other moms at the various mom functions of the day - girl scouts, PTA meetings, ball games, church - where the moms would compare stories thus making the part about all the others going b.s.

My mom had the nads to actually call. My daughter and I would have had a similar conversation but I wouldn't have made the phone call.