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My dad always said if you're going to go out and play with the boys, you have to get up and work with the men. This is why things like picking rock, haling bales, and moving fenceposts were reserved for early sunrise mornings after I was out too late. It made it so I'd have to really think twice about staying out hyper-late, even though I was never given a curfew. "Being Realistic" is a sad, pathetic excuse for accomodating bad behavior.

Sounds like your dad and my dad should get together and start a "Reality Bites" Training Camp for Unruly Teens.

I got really drunk once on a Friday night as a teen. My friends brought me home. [I had good friends. (They too were the result of "Reality Bites" parenting.) They wouldn't let me drive, and dropped me and my car off at my home. (They weren't fools, though. They took one look at my dad's scowling face in the window, and fled for their lives. Cowards.)]

Anyway... The following morning I was rudely awakened bright and early and put to work on what was supposed to be my day to relax and sleep in. I spent the entire day doing housework and yard work with a head-splitting hangover. The yard work must have been my dad's idea. He's good with equations such as:

Lawnmower Motor + Hangover = "Please, someone, just kill me now."

Diabolical, but effective. I never stumbled home drunk, again.

My parents are hard to explain. They may sound strict, but actually they were pretty permissive. The catch was: though I could "do my own thing" without lectures or traditional punishments, they always made sure I paid the consequences for my actions (often with them being the ones who orchestrated the consequences).

Back in the days, I was asked in on a school conference on alcohol abuse at my college, a small N.E. country-club school. I was the Intra-Fraternity Council President and President of my frat, the most notorious of partyers on campus. Needless to say, the meeting was at 8am, I was up until 3, and I made it there extremely hungover. But I made it.

During the meeting, much discussed was the horrids of alcohol and all those mean frat boys and their parties. The Dean of Students, the Dean of the College, and the President were all there. Hands were wrung, sighs were sighed, and the great solution of "awareness" was generally agreed upon.

At one point, the President, a product of the modern university -- that is, a half-moron whose specialty was sniffing alumni bank accounts -- suggested that students be required to attend 8am classes. He was laughed out of the room. Me, I kept my mouth shut. I never took a class before noon. I was the only one, the President included, who knew that he was right.

Oh, after that alcohol awareness meeting, I went to the restroom. Cleaning up, I looked up at the mirror and found that my face was riddled with tic-tac-toe games my brothers had played on my face the night before, when I passed out on the sofa. Not a person said a thing during the meeting.

Recently, an old professor died. My father and I planned to go to the memorial service, on a Saturday. Dad asked me if I didn't think the service would interrupt classes. He had no clue that there haven't been Saturday classes since the late 1960s, when the inmates took over the asylum.

Modern educators are cowards.