Patrick's Place

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Monday's Morals

Your friends have a teenage daughter who has been invited to a party hosted at your neighbor’s home. You discover that the neighbors will be out of town when the party is happening. Would you tell your friends about it? Why or why not?

I have a horrible propensity for stumbling into the middle of something like this and letting the cat out of the bag before I knew anything about the cat or the bag, so I probably would tell my friends, but inadvertently.

However, even if that didn't happen, I absolutely would tell them. I live in a small town, and I know at least by sight most of the teens in my son's school and a good proportion of those in the other public high school in town. Part of being a friend and a parent is looking out for one another. I'm also a semi-public figure so (some of) the kids would know me by sight as That One Librarian. I'm pretty regular about settling them down at work, too.

Another way of handling this, though, is to talk to the daughter and make her aware that I'm aware of the situation. Frankly, as a neighbor, I wouldn't want an unsupervised teenage party going on next door/down the block from me anyway!

I'm kind of laughing at myself because this whole thing makes me feel somewhat hypocritical; the one time I had a party while my parents were out of town, we just sat around watching TV. My teen years were so freakin' daring!!