Wherein Mr. Sisk rants not about teen pregnancy but teen marriage.

So, looks like teenage pregnancy is all the rage again. Solange Knowles back in '03. Then Jamie Lynn Spears. And all those pregnancy pact girls in New England (thank God they weren't from Mississippi). Now, I'm specifically interested in Bristol Palin's pregnancy, because as we all know, her abstinence-only education supporting mother is the newly announced Republican veep candidate. Perhaps Bristol's untimely knocking up will communicate something to her mother about sex education. I doubt enough to change her politics, though.

I'm not trying to be pejorative here. I commend Bristol for keeping her baby. It's going to be tough, but it's going to be worth it. What absolutely blows my mind is the news that Bristol intends to marry the baby's father. At 17. Now, feel free to disagree, but I'm strongly under the persuasion that having a baby at seventeen most likely won't ruin her life, but getting married that young will. That's two adult roles the poor girl will have to take on all at once: mother and wife. Hopefully those hormones will kick in and guide her in the mother role, but I hear it takes people years to learn how to play the spouse(admittedly, it probably takes men longer). And at seventeen, I worry both Bristol and Baby Daddy will be way too self-involved to make a relationship work. Loving a baby you birth and can't send back is one thing; loving the boy who knocked you up Til Death Do You Part is quite another. I'm flabbergasted, really.

It's 2008. No longer is the stigma of being an unwed single mother as severe. Okay, I've never been one, but I've known plenty and it seems to me that there is quite a precedent for successfully raising a child as a single mother. There is not, however, the same precedent for young marriages (hell, marriages in general). Perhaps it's my Gen Y sensibilities showing, or my white trash morality, but I think there are far worse things in this world than having a baby out of wedlock. Much worse. War, poverty, restless legs syndrome. Marrying at seventeen. Sheesh.

I hate to rant so much, but damn, y'all. Does anyone else find this impending marriage as ludicrous as I do?

In other news, Mr. Sisk is back in action with a vengeance. Not only has he successfully conferenced with all his students (all 43 of them!) without canceling class (a nightmare, btw), but he's also stayed on top of his grading and made two unsuspecting eighteen-year-old girls cry. Well, they actually made themselves cry, or thought crying would get them out of having to buy books. But it didn't work, because he knows college freshmen are often very selfish (he was one not so long ago). And that they are too immature to get married.

Wit that, I dash off to read Nietzsche. That's a line I never thought I'd use.

Happy Tuesday, y'all.