She was 15 when she got the fake ID. California has strict child labor laws that are even stricter for children 15 and under. I grew up in a large city in California and I couldn’t even get an interview until I turned 16; even then, it was slim pickins. There’s no incentive to hire a teenager when you have a whole…

I moved out on my own shortly after turning 17. I never emancipated, because I was close to my parents and if I needed someone to, say, co-sign for my apartment, they were happy to do it. But I found my own apartment, found my own job, set up my own utilities and paid all my bills (with money orders, because I wasn’t…

So we should all live at home until we’re 24? What exactly are you saying?

This is a weirdly privileged comment.

The convenient miscarriage is a common television trope, something my mom and I have been rolling our eyes at since the Melrose Place days. It’s a convenient way to have the drama of an unplanned pregnancy without ever having to let the character whisper the dirty a-word. My mom recently started watching Crazy…

Many years back I remember hearing a black American author on This American Life (sorry, I have absolutely no recollection who it might have been) talking about how when she first arrived in France she didn’t experience any racism, and it was absolutely liberating after growing up in The United States. But after…

From the Washington Post article:

Either you go to Sul Ross, or this is a common situation with a lot of small town movie theatres.

Something specifically explored in One Mississippi, when someone masturbates in front of Kate and Tig wants to tell the world but Kate reminds her that it’s not her story to tell.

For real. Anna’s call in September and all the ensuing comments about how Jezebel needs to stop trying to beat a dead horse was the first thing I thought about when I saw this story. Also, I was in the middle of reading the comment on the Corey Haim/Charlie Sheen story about “when will the witch hunt end?” when my…

FWIW, I was 14 for the first month and a half of 11th grade, and there was at least one other kid in my class who was younger than me.

I turned 14 my sophomore year of high school.

When I was a freshman in high school I dated a senior who was in my journalism class. It’s not unheard of for freshmen to date seniors. But since I had skipped a grade in elementary school, and he had failed a grade in elementary school, I was 13 and he was 19. We didn’t have sex because I didn’t do that then, but I…

How did it come out that the child was undocumented? Did someone on the ambulance rat her out? Did they actually harass a 10-year-old girl for her papers?

I’m hoping that someone will see me here in the greys...