"Dumpster Diving Through My Daughter"

From Mom Click.

"Jumping into a dumpster and rooting around for castoff doughnuts is not what I thought my 16-year old daughter would find enticing or amusing. Maybe a son, but surely not a daughter, whose interests I hoped would be more refined.

For years she had piano and art lessons, and a short stint with dance and gymnastics. I read her no end of great literature, and she was exposed to the best theatre in the world in London and New York. These were things that I knew for myself were uplifting to the soul and spirit, and I hoped they were to her as well. Maybe they still are, but as of late, they seem to be lodged in the back of her brain-the very back.

I just had a crash course on the world of dumpster diving. Two nights this week my daughter has frequented a dumpster at a local doughnut establishment. She trespassed. She is not technically stealing anything because those doughnuts were in the garbage, but still. A mother has to wonder why they were there. Were they thrown out because it was the end of the day, or because someone accidentally added too much lard?

She went with some boy friends, and I don't really want to know the answer to this question: Did she jump in or was it just them? But if I think I know her, she probably jumped and reveled in the seediness and naughtiness of it all. I noticed that she took a shower before she went, not after. To me, this spelled certain brain damage. And the outfits that she wore were a hodgepodge of mismatch and intrigue.

Bill Cosby used to say that all children had "brain damage." Of course this includes teenagers. Why this is, no one really knows. It's the same phenomenon that happens to mothers after childbirth. Suddenly they show signs of dementia, mood swings and hysteria because their bodies have gone through a tremendous change. (I happen to know this for a fact-ahem.)

Looking back at my own "taboos" at my daughter's age, the big thing was climbing on the roof of the school on summer nights. Nothing happened once I got up there with my friends but a lot thinking we were so cool.

Friend: "What did you do this weekend?

Me: "Oh, just climbed on the roof of the school."

Friend: "Really? Did you get caught?"

Me: "Of course not!"

Friend: "Can I come next time you go?

Me: "Sure!"

It was just the fact that we were on the roof, and we shouldn't have been. Maybe that's the same thing that's going through my daughter's mind. You just do things just for the sake of doing them. It doesn't MEAN anything really.

I understand teenage pressures. Their lives are ever more fast-paced and complicated. They have eight classes they need to juggle, part time jobs and extra-curricular activities. They have to get up earlier that experts say they should. They have to stay up late to study hard so they can get into a good college and to text their fingers to the bones. Life is rough, and there often isn't enough time for fun, that very valuable commodity.

I know that my daughter lives in a world far more complex than mine, and I don't envy her that. I do respect this, and encourage her to blow off steam. Because you CAN'T go dumpster diving as a respectable adult, you just can't.

So, glazed or filled, sprinkles or not?"

When I was a kid, I lived close to a Frito-Lay distribution warehouse, and their dumpsters were absolute heaven, filled with bags of chips, candies (the large box sizes), and other snacks. My friends and I would haul home cases of the stuff.

It all came to an end when someone got sick--it turned out all the food was expired...WAYYYYYY expired.

Later on, the warehouse got as locking dumpster, and we couldn't get in there if we wanted to.