Well, sorta. Maggie serves as a manager on the high school varsity football team. So do 5 other girls. Seems that every game night they all rotate to one of the six homes to do a sleep-over, and this happens to be our week.

When I was in high school I would've opened a vein to find a house with 6 sleeping wenches in it.

This, then, is the very definition of parenthood. You're now responsible for the welfare of those who just a scant few years past you would've been stalking. Or something.

I'm reminded on a daily basis of just how much more mature girls are than boys at this age. I kind of scoffed at this notion when I was a teen-aged boy, but let me tell ya, it's all so very true. My two girls are very active socially and have many friends. My son has his share of cronies as well. Put the two groups side by side and the disparagy is stunning.

All in all, I'd take the girls by a mile. I can actually have conversations with them. They have an ability to reason. They're alert and functional. Situational ethics is something they believe in and practice.

My son's friends are lumps. They appear at my door and grunt. Their communication is also based on the grunt language, replete with many hand signals to convey the more difficult poly-syllabic verbage. No pantry or refrigerator is immune from their onslaught. No appliance or furniture item is off-limits to their assault. They emulate the people of the desert in their dress - flowing robes and headwear - which are purchased at the local retail store under the guise of hip hop wear. One of them stopped by the other day wearing pants that could easily have passed as a midi-dress, as the width of the two pant legs was so extreme as to not appear to have any division between them. Yet the length stopped just above the socks. I'm told these are called 'shorts'.

I thought shorts were the checkered things he had carefully exposed about 2" worth above the top of his waistline. So much for my fashion sense.

On the other hand, there's one girl who never quite made it into my book of must know people. Ally described the latest situation with her younger sister last night.

Younger sister, let's call her Harley, is the prototypical go-go dancer. Blonde, gravelly voiced, big ass, neurotic as hell. If she had any actual dancing talent and was taller than 5'-0", she probably would have really gone places in that market. Might have actually hit the big time and made a few porno's.

This is the type of person who you figure is trouble from the first minute you lay eyes on them. When Ally and I were first dating, I was over at her house, sitting in the living room, watching TV. Harley, then 10 years old, strolls in eating a peanut butter sandwich. Plunks down on the sofa opposite me and proceeds to do the 10 year old thing of making eyes at big sister's boyfriend. Showing me her tongue, and stuff. Eating her sandwich. Thing is, when she was about halfway through eating she got tired of it. Proceeded to languidly stretch, put the sandwich at arms length behind her head, and drop it behind the sofa. A sort of disposable reverse dunk.

I never did have the desire to peak behind that sofa to see what I could see.

When she was 13, my mother-in-law showed up at our house at 2 in the morning, dragging Harley behind her. A very sleepy Outfoxed left Ally sleeping in bed to answer the doorbell.

OF: Why mother-in-law, how nice to see you at my door at 2 in the morning. What's up?

M-in-Law: (very agitated) I just now finally caught Harley after chasing her all over town in the car. She's been catting around and sleeping with boys and I just can't deal with her anymore. Can you all please take her off my hands for a couple days?

Just before I was about to launch into my discourse about parental responsibility, Ally appeared and took Harley and let M-in-Law off the hook. With little else to do, I went back to bed.

In the morning, at my usual time, I was munching on my breakfast Fruit-Loops and scanning the newspaper. Harley rolls in and gets her own cereal, sits down at the table with me. I'm normally zoned out when I have a paper in front of me, but for some reason I was aware of her rather pointedly studying me. I became a whole lot more aware when I realized she had shrugged off half of her halter top so that I could scan a little bit more that just the baseball scores.

Trust me. I upheld my sterling reputation as a colossol prude in that situation.

I think you get the picture. This chick had some real tendancies. I kinda kept as much distance as possible from her over the years. Which was easy because I really never saw her much more often than Thanksgiving or Christmas. Ally was good enough to warn me of any impending wisits so that I could go elsewhere.

Harley married about 5 years ago, and gave us all reason to hope. She found a guy with a very steady job, who already owned a home and two cars and was about as stable a personality as exists. Good family background, all the trimmings. They had a little girl three years ago.

Last night I got caught up on the rest of the story. They're divorcing. For whatever reason, I don't know, unless her husband finally threw up his hands. Don't know that I blame him. You see, after their baby was born, Harley looked askance at her weight gain and decided to to something about it. Rapid weight loss. Yeah, methadone works. Heroin, even better. How about an order of Crack with those fries? Tends to cost a lot, though. She scammed money off everyone in town, and when that dried up, started on her husband.

In rapid succession, she managed to go through her own supply of money. Then she hit the credit cards. Then the savings accounts (his). Hocked all their stuff. It's an old, tired story. Always seems to have the same ending. Harley basically put them into bankruptcy within 6 months, and was arrested on drug charges, which somehow she managed to get out of by agreeing to enter a rehab program. Husband took on a second job, both to try to salvage his credit and to get the hell out of the house as much as possible. And for a while, it seemed to work. She was staying at home with their daughter, he was working his ass off.

(Yes, I'm reaching a conclusion to this sorry mess, bear with me)

In the preliminary divorce action in court, Harley tried to get hold of the one piece of tangible property that had no lien on it, her husband's car. The judge said no. When she whined about not having any transportation, the judge told her to take the bus. Which leads me to believe the judge might also start granting the husband control of his own money, house, and daughter. Which is something he hasn't had a lot of for the past few years.

So dancer girl Harley is still manipulating, lap dancing her way through life. Understand she has started going out to bars and picking up men, in the wake of her divorce. Shouldn't be too long before she shows up at my door at 2 am, again. Makes a sandwich and tosses it behind the couch. Begs me for money and shows me her tits at breakfast.

Hang on to your credit cards boys. Old Harley is back in action.

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