I’m almost certain that every member of the X111.com community can agree with the following statement:
If you are old enough to spread your legs or otherwise engage in intercourse, you are old enough to be responsible for any contraceptives you might need or have prescribed to you.
Of the idiots I am ashamed to say I used to maintain friendships with, I have to say that Kate is the least stupid in terms of birth control but she is certainly deplorably lazy. She has been in the same relationship for three years-ish [I think] and didn’t even go for intercourse until, idk, several months ago.
They use condoms and such, which is a good practice, but after having a scare [which wasn't REALLY a scare, just she has a whack cycle], she decided to go on hormonal birth control. Being, like I said, an idiot, the idea of taking a pill at the same time every day balks her so she and her doc decided on the Ortho-Evra patch. There have been some pretty nasty side effects associated with that thing. I’ll take my little pills, thanks.
For those of you not familiar with how it works, you slap a patch on a specific site once a week. At the end of that week, you remove it and exchange it for another one. The fourth week of that month you go without and that’s when…yeah. You have to be amazing to fuck that up. Since you wear one patch on the third week and then have the fourth without, that’s a good two weeks in which one can obtain their next month’s prescription so they can have their BC on hand for the next day of the new cycle.
She called me, one day:
“Oh boy…what now?”
“She didn’t go get my patch!”
“Um…why does your mom have to get it?”
“She has my insurance card.”
“So get it from her and go to CVS.”
“I don’t know how to get a prescription filled! She just needed to fucking do it. I mean, she knows I need it. She goes, ‘Oh, hey did you need that filled?’ today, which is like three days into when I’ve needed it.”
“…and you didn’t say anything? You get the card, go to the counter, say, ‘This is my name; I need this filled, please.’”
No sympathy! If you are old enough to fuck, you’re DEFINITELY old enough to keep track of your birth control. That is not, and never will be, mommy’s duty unless there’s another medical reason why you need to be put on a BCP at a younger age. No, I don’t think her mom should have her insurance card at that point, I think mom should’ve handed it over for that purpose. Even so, there’s nothing stopping her from saying, “Hey mom, I have to go get this filled,” so she can either obtain her insurance card or to at least let mom know. There was plenty of time, and there’s no excuse for her not to have what she needed other than sheer laziness and stupidity.
Before it was time for transcripts to get faxed off to our respective institutions of learning [she took Keystone courses as well, but attended different physical High Schools] I was chatting with her about how long it was going to be until she was finished with her course. She answered and added, “And then mom faxes it off to the school,” as if she or I could print our list of grades and fax it off as if it was a credible source. No, that’s unheard of. No school would accept that…they would all want it on the official letterhead. So I told her she had to phone Keystone’s offices and have it faxed.
“Why? If you finish during the day and your mom’s at work, you can just call them and get it over with. The sooner it’s in, the sooner it’s accounted for and the less chance for last-minute trauma.”
“I’ll just have my mom do it, y’know?”
“No, I don’t know…they won’t eat you. They’re very polite people–my parents actually had no dealings with them whatsoever, it was me, start to finish. You just call and say, ‘I’m so-and-so, I took this course, and I would like my transcript faxed to the guidance office of my school at this number.’”
“Why? Mom said she’ll do it. It’s no big deal.”
“It is a big deal that you will be 18 this Autumn and are too afraid to make a fucking phone call…”
“Look, I didn’t grow up as fast as you. I was babied for a while longer. If my mom is going to offer to do something for me, I’m not just gonna be like, ‘NO, Mom! Don’t. I’ll do it myself.’”
“And that’s your problem. You’ll never learn anything, that way.”
I mean, having your parents do some favors for you is fine. I’m sure it’s very nice to be able to fall back on that cushion of support that most families have. However…when you’re that close to the legal age of responsibility, you need to be able to do some things for yourself. And no, I can’t expect most 18-year-olds to be able to fully manage a household or anything…but I can expect them to be responsible for their BC and for making a simple, not-even-three-minute phone call regarding their transcript. Mommy shouldn’t have to do everything at that point. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t be able to cook for themselves or do their own laundry.
Yet, these are the same kids who want to run off with their boyfriend as soon as they turn eighteen or pull the, “I’m eighteen! I’ll do what I want!” card…
helixy