City Girl

I was on the bus on my way home from work today observing the other passengers (the bus is seriously the best place for people watching) when one particular girl caught my eye. She was about 17 years old and beautiful- stunning even- and if I were to cast her in a movie I would cast her as the homecoming queen or head cheerleader or beauty pageant contestant. But you had to really look at this girl closely to see that beauty that she seemed to be trying to hide because she was wearing a too tight “wife beater” tank top, too tight too short jean shorts, her blonde hair was pulled back into a severe ponytail and she was wearing way too much eye liner. In her lap, sat her baby (about two months old) and next to her was a guy, presumably the baby’s father, who looked like a thug that just walked straight out of a prison cell and got onto this bus (although he was quite attractive as well). What was alarming about this whole situation was not really that this teenager had a baby with this thug boy, but that she had a tattoo across the side of her neck (yes, her neck) that said in large print “Shizz’s Bitch” (albeit in scrolly pretty script).

All I could think was “that could be Ellie” wearing a too tight tank top on a bus with her baby and thug boyfriend named Shizz and upsetting neck tattoo that declares her self-esteem problems. And suddenly I began to panic about raising our daughter in the City. Sure, suburban kids get pregnant and get into trouble too, but I am pretty certain that neck tattoo issue wouldn’t happen in the Burbs.

I don’t want my daughter to grow up declaring that she’s Shizz’s (or anyone’s) bitch. I don’t want her to have a scary thug boyfriend or a degrading tattoo. I don’t want her to have a baby until she’d old and married and ready. What are we thinking raising our sweet little baby in a harsh, big city? We live in a city - a real city, not near the city like where I grew up - but in a city with millions of people and hundreds of murders and lots of gangs and homelessness and dilapidated buildings and litter and drug problems. Do I really want Ellie to grow up in the midst of all this ugliness and violence, thinking that it's the norm?

This isn’t the first time that I had a bought of Mom Panic, and I am sure that it won’t be the last, but it was definitely the worst so far. I had to repeatedly remind myself that there are plenty of baby-less, degrading-neck-tattoo-less kids raised in Cities every day. And while there is a lot of ugliness in the city, there's also lots of beautiful parks and museums and culture and wonderful opportunities at her finger tips. I suppose it will be years before it's practical for me to worry about Ellie developing horrible self-esteem problems and teen pregnancy.

But still, sometimes the suburbs seem attractive.