I moved out of my first room this year after only having been in there eleven days--my roommate was absolutely horrible and I was completely unable to function. I am an art major, and having a good place, atmosphere-wise, light-wise and stress-wise to work is NECESSARY. I didn't have it. I moved my shit out of there in two hours once I got my forms processed--I enlisted my strongest friend and we just hauled things up two flights to a new room.

It is a hassle, definitely. But it only takes a day, if you hurry, and if you think you can't work in the room you have now, you need to move.
Don't worry about hallway cliques. You'll probably never talk to these people anyway. In college it's every man for himself.

Besides, one shower per 18 people, tiny kitchen and dark room is a college norm. It's also better than most apartments. heheheheh.
I spent three months last year with no overhead light in a room with another art major because the maintenance was so slow they didn't care if our flourescent was burnt out. We were extremely frustrated, trying to cut paper and mix correct colors by desk-lamp. If the conditions are unliveable, move. You won't have that liberty forever.

It is normal, because you believe it's a big huge enormous thing. Whether it is or not is really up to your upbringing and your personal thought on the subject. You are ready emotionally and physically, you say, but this is clashing with a huge stigma you have about sex. There's a deep-rooted psychological fear here, and you either need to get to the root of it or just forge ahead. It may be that the best thing you can do is calm yourself with some proven technique--close your eyes and breathe slowly, hold each other, etc... Then just go for it. Once it's over with you'll probably have some trembling and freaking out. Everyone does. But I promise every time it gets better. Really!

Also, 14 is a bit young to be scrumping, but that's just my two cents. You sound relatively mature but you know your own life best.

There's a large difference in the mentality of a 13 and 16-year old. A mentor-type friendship can be good, but although 3 years is not a big difference to adults, let's think...
3 years, to a thirteen year old, is almost a quarter of your life.
3 years, to a sixteen year old, is about a fifth of your life.
3 years, to a 30 year old, is only a tenth of your life.
Those years represent a huge amount of experience and maturity (or lack thereof) between 13 and 16. It can be a mess if you try to be equals, as in relationships.

thanks, Speed Racer.

Well dear, you ARE dressing up as whores.
...

Er, ok.
I think I'll have a sandwich.

Christianity gives me a bit of a problem... actually, logistically, it gives me a lot of a problem. You know, the King James version (and it's a version, isn't it? You know good old James left out TONS of chapters that he didn't like, because he was King, because he was British? Stuff about women, and freedom, and such...) wasnt written until the tenth century or so, and you know fossils weren't discovered until the 1700's... so where's dinosaurs in the bible, huh?
Quote: "In the beginning, God created the earth, and animals, and then man, but before that, there were dinosaurs, but they sucked..."

Jesus, I'm sure, wouldn't be Christian if he were alive today.
No, I'm serious! Come on! He lived under Roman rule--the most uptight, European, shaved-faces leather-skirted Republicans EVER at that time. What did Jesus come up with? "Hang out, drink some wine, be groovy with whores and liberals and artists and fishermen and people you government bastards HATE. It's great! Come on! Love thy neighbor: it's free love, baby!"
Jesus was a freakin' liberal, a heretic, hated by the government, hated by the religious right. Christians now would hate him too. Well, most of them anyway. Not the real Christians. The crazy right-wing Conservative Sunday-Christians. The ones that egg your car and shoot your cat.

Being serious for a moment... That, though, is the real reason that after 18 steady years of church with Christian parents and a pretty docile church community, I decided it was just wrong--it was the Sunday Christians. Nothing pisses me off more than someone who just never, never matches up with what they preach and bow their heads to every week. I saw a lot of hate in school and in public committed by people with crosses around their necks, and I didn't want to be in that mob any more.

Now, when you said religion, there's more to that than Christianity and Jesus and all that good stuff, man. There's Buddhism, which I'm reading because it's very sweet and calming. Even Buddhism, though, isn't without people who will twist it for gain and cruelty. No religion is safe. It's an invasion! A freaking take-over by the nasty people who haven't learned their karmic lessons! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES AND PURITY OF SPIRIT!!

As for myself, I'm a Wiccan priestess with some eclectic background (that is, reading and adding philosophies and practices from other religions as I choose, to make one conglomerate path toward truth). I find that most of the trouble with religions comes from associating with other people--letting other people make rules for you about abstract things like god and love and truth and hate, and having the mob mentality that "seventy thousand other people think so, and it's easy for me to think so too!". The path I've found is good for solitaries--I rely only on myself and my spirit to find happiness in deity.
Sorry, not all of that is entertaining, but there it is.

Haha.... that's clever... I like that. I don't know if there's anything you really need to do--don't take yourselves seriously, for one thing. How about making posters and tacking them up around the school? They can say things like "How Far Left Can You Get?" and "Left-Handed People Are In Their Right Minds" and "Swing Left!" and etc... be mysterious... like guerilla left-handedness!
Attack the school with bursts of lefthandedness!

In a more laid back mood, just watch movies and hang out together and go out to eat and notice happily that nobody's bumping elbows with those right-handed assbumps who always manage to sit on your left.
(yeah, I'm one of those--my boyfriend is lefthanded--we had to work this out a while back)

I suppose it could be okay--with a great amount of care, tact, consideration and maturity.
The situation in America with young (under the age of 18, that is) people and sexuality is like a keg of gunpowder. Some people blame it on Britney Spears, the news, Redbook magazine, the American obsession with thin, svelte, nude models, no proper role models, etc. For some reason there is little education going on, and as you've noticed, people who have hormones and lust don't see a reason NOT to act on them.
The main reason it's a bad idea is that this society no longer has resources for dealing with people who become mothers at the peak of their hormonal childbearing age--14 and 15. This was the case in the Middle Ages, when people rarely lived to 50 and it was important to marry young.
As soon as they got lustful, they were married and started breeding. The genes have not changed, but the world has. We just can't deal with a whole generation of pregnant 14-year-olds.
Sex has many positive correlations, don't let people try to talk you out of that. It can be a very important thing, and to be totally nonsexual can be damaging to mental health. However there's no reason to be just lewd and loose at fourteen.
14-year-olds do not have the mental resources to handle the mess of sex and its consequences. Not because of sex alone, I believe, but because of the huge huge number of THINGS attached to it--commitment, hiding it, flaunting it, being a slut, being cool, being embarrassed, anger, happiness, pregnancy and disease, religion, family---it's all been tied in by society and that makes sex an incredibly complicated and annoying thing. I can't think of a 14-year-old who can really handle all of that without fucking up in some area. I had sex at sixteen and I made mistakes as well--people found out who shouldn't have--but at 14? God, i could barely get my homework done regularly and not scream at my parents, let alone handle sex and all its accessories.

it's about mental maturity and that's the short answer.

You might want to go check it out, considering your question made little sence as well.

good gods, just shave it--but use a moisturizing shave soap and a single-blade razor. If you do it right you won't be all broken out and such. I suppose you could always just tell people that's where you keep your pet buffalo.

It won't. Just stick it in real securely. Staple it in if you have to.

This wishy-washy technique is obviously not getting you anywhere. Note yourself--you mentioned wanting to meet, but he said it would be "weird". There's a whole new set of rules of etiquette when meeting someone face-to-face. It doesn't sound like he's too enthusiastic about taking this acquaintanceship to anything more.
If you're hellbent on getting this to work, you might need to just plough ahead and ask him straight out, "If you're not busy on ____, would you like to meet me at ____? If not I won't bring it up again." It could be he's just got a lot on his mind.

I don't know why this is a fad, because frankly, 80% of the girls I've seen with belly piercings should never have done it. It just looks putrid if you've got fat on your stomach, and that is one of the easiest places to get fat. There's nothing like calling attention to your flab.

My friend (who has a flabby belly) just got hers done and said it feels like a pinch, no worse. My acquaintance got hers done for her 17th birthday and it got infected, very very badly, and she had to take it out and let it heal.

good lord..
yes, and yes.

Thanks for trying to alleviate the Mondayness of today. If only you could cancel my 9 am class as well...

Yikes. Back up there, Cassanova. It's incredibly rude to fuck and tell, but at fourteen, that's what happens. Boys don't learn manners until they're about twenty-nine, unless they are of that rare breed that comes with politeness, compassion and self-respect.
Obviously this guy isn't. Nor, I'd wager, are you, since you fell for it!
Come on, when someone says "Do me I love you," do you think gentleness and commitment are on his mind? Good gods.

Many congenial thanks for the kind words.
I accept your commendation and congratulations and return them to you for finding me.
As you are male and cannot bear children, and I am female and cannot impregnate you, I would be extremely proud to do so regardless and give you my children.
This seems to be a good setup, especially considering that I don't want to bear my own children and have been looking for someone to do it for me.
Happiness to you,
Koshii

It's all right to bathe her, so long as you're very gentle, of course. Get some water that's warm, but not hot, at least two buckets full, and just pour it gently over her back on the driveway or somewhere. Then use a light shampoo on her fur and wash her like you'd wash your own hair. It usually helps to have a couple people do this together so you can hold her.
Once she's all soapy and smelling girly, get another bucket and rinse her off. Make sure you've got all the soap off. Dry her with a towel and she will smell nice and feel better as well.

I have never had a fancy party, but all of mine have been very successful and fun for everyone who came. The important thing is to have a lot of friends over who enjoy your company and want to spend time with you on your birthday. Really, everything else is just stuffing.
My sixteenth birthday was a good time because I had friends bring over old tapes of really old shows we all enjoyed in childhood--Knight Rider, Jem and the Holograms, and ancient Rainbow Brite movies. Everyone's got old tapes sitting around in their house. Ask them to bring a few and then put them on as background. Keep the party unstructured. Some people watch TV, some people cut up fruits for dipping in sugar, or what have you, some people socialize on the back porch...

You don't have to spend hardly any money at all if you get everyone to bring a munchie snack and a tape, or a game for your PS2 or Nintendo64, and a 2-on-2 game of Tekken or Mortal Kombat ALWAYS livens up a party. You don't need to be fancy to have a good party.
And trust me, they're not lame little get togethers. They can be very relaxing and silly. Spaceballs and Wayne's World are two excellent party movies to get people in a good mood.

People have been coming to me for advice so long, I might as well do this all in one spot. I watch a lot of unfathomable Japanese TV and drink a lot of coffee. I'm a freshly-hatched Illustration major, formerly trapped & dying in the American South, now busily teaching phrases to all of Nagoya Japan. I'm always on the lookout for more video games and sushi.
I have lots of interesting pets. Wanna see my beetle?

Website:
Gender:
Location:
Occupation:
Age:
AIM:
Yahoo:
Member Since:
Answers:
Last Update:
Visitors:
Main Categories:




Favorite Columnists