16-year-old girl runs off to Jordan to meet 25-year-old guy she met on My Space.
You gotta admit, the girl’s got balls. Sadly, she ran off thinking there was a well meaning guy on the other end who’d take care of her (that’s the assumption anywhere. Nowhere in this article is she allowed to speak for herself and her own motives, and her parents are baffled, as parents usually are). There certainly could have been a well-meaning guy on the other end (sure, uh huh), but I think a lot of women think that in order for them to go out and have adventures and live exciting lives (it didn’t surprise me that she’s from a small “agricultural” community), they have to partner themselves with some random guy in order to do so.
I’m just as guilty of this, of course, I ran off to Bellingham with a high school boyfriend three days after turning eighteen (my parents wouldn’t let me out of the house before then), thinking that now I was going to have all sorts of great adventures. Sadly, not every guy actually shares in the idea that his partner should go off and have adventures – with or without him, and you wake up one day with 100 extra pounds, three kids, and a drinking problem.
I totally blame Disney movies. I mean, you get this whole idea into your head that life doesn’t really start until you find your prince charming and get married. What you don’t wonder about until later is why all those romantic stories *end* when the characters get married. Well, likely they *end* because all of the adventure stops after they get married, and a movie all about how Mr. & Mrs. argue about who put the spatula in the wrong drawer gets boring (this is why I love the Shrek movies and hope they keep making them. I love that the story goes on and there’s still adventure to be had *after* the couple gets together. And they aren’t always fairy-tale happy, but they love and respect each other).
I want the story where the 16 year old runs off to join Green Peace and gets hauled out of the ocean because she’s trying to blockade a whaling ship with her little rubber boat. Or the girl who goes off to Thailand and starts a rural school for tsunami orphans (I did, in fact, read a story about a 17 year old girl who did this, with her parents’ blessing, and who raised all the money for the school and helped build it with her own two hands).
Because, you know, you don’t need to hang on some guy and wait for him to take you on adventures. Cause he probably won’t. And some of the more deviant ones will think it’s a great adventure to keep you locked in the closet in a foreign country and only bring you out for the occasional gang bang.
Like I said: ballsy, but stupid.
Go buy a one-way ticket to Fairbanks and build a log cabin in the woods and brew your own beer. Believe me, it’s far more exciting than attaching yourself to somebody who probably doesn’t have your best interests in mind.
You’re the only one who knows what your best interests are. Don’t rely on somebody else to decide them for you.
