A Shopping Trip with Blondechick15

Yesterday Blondechick had a day off from school, so we went shopping. We started at the outlet mall near us and found a specific kind of non-denim pants she wanted at Pac Sun. Next door at Rue 21, we couldn't pass up basic t-shirts on sale for $4 each, before I insisted we head to the place where I had authorized a shopping spree: Goodwill! There she found more than a dozen sweaters and long-sleeve t-shirts for cooler fall/winter school days, at $4 and $5 each. She was pleased with her many brand-name selections, and I was pleased at our tab.

On our last stop, at the grocery, she asked me, "Mom, did I tell you there's a 15 year old boy at my school who got his girlfriend pregnant? Oh, I forgot to tell you about this! Remember the abortion debate we had in my class? Well, everyone wondered when this boy was going to say something, because he and his girlfriend are keeping the baby.

He didn't say anything for a long time, but finally, after this one obnoxious kid was going on and on about how fetuses don't have any brains, and they don't even know what happens to them, this guy finally interrupted.

"When I found out that my girlfriend was pregnant, I knew that another human being was inside of her. We may have made a mistake, but there was no way that another human being should die because we were stupid. I'm looking at my teenage years, and they're being cut short. I'm having to drop out of a lot of things and grow up fast, to help take care of a baby, but it's a life, and I can't kill it because of what I did." "

"Wow," I said to her, unable to hide the tears in my eyes, "Not many 15 year old boys would say that to their girlfriends. Most of them would say, 'Just get an abortion.' "

"I know," she replied, her eyes downcast. Then she told me about a conversation she'd had with her most recent boyfriend, a 15 year old she'd met at summer school, and a non-Christian. Sticking with our no-dating policy, we'd let him come over a few times, but we strongly encouraged her (read: this has been a source of tension for weeks) not to get too involved with him (or any boy, at this point in her life). After ignoring us for the past month, she'd recently broken up with him for her own reasons, but to our great relief.

"Once we were talking about this topic--not about us, but just in general--and I said if I ever got pregnant, I would never get an abortion. He said, 'If that ever happened to my girlfriend, I'd be so mad...I'd punch that thing.' Mom, can a baby die if someone hits the mother in the right place?"

With a weird mixture of heartbreak at having to answer this question, and rejoicing that she'd seen the contrast for herself, I answered the question. "He really wasn't a very nice boy," she admitted. "I realized that pretty quickly. I wasn't ever serious about him."

With uncharacteristic self-control, I bit my tongue.

After we got home, she thanked me again for taking her shopping. "And did you notice we spent all those hours together and didn't have any fights?"

It had been a good day with Blondechick.