It's hard to imagine a list of this nature without including a song from Carol King's Tapestry which, for years, was the biggest selling album of all time and which elevated the female singer/songwriter to new heights. I'd pick "I Feel the Earth Move" as the best one for this narrow list.

Get a butt-slapping grip

This article makes me crazy. It's right up there with the BBC report I heard today about the massive--a true BBC adjective--number of sex offenders on MySpace.com. In this Salon.com piece, the writer of the regular column Broadsheet writes, describing the offenses of two 13 year old boys who ran through the halls of their middle school "slapping girls on the butt," that she doesn't want "diminish what they did; it was a violation against those girls that might have been seriously traumatic.... deserving of serious punishment."Don't misunderstand me, the salon.com article is bemoaning the boys' absurd fate--they are facing jail time and having to put their names on the sex offenders list (This is why the BBC article bugged me--after the case in Georgia, I'm now suspicious of the "sex offender" label.) I, like many women, have my stories about inappropriate advances from males--the Steve Miller song "The Joker" will, for me, ever be associated with an obnoxious older boy who hung about my locker when I was in 7th grade singing to me about my peaches--but, with one exception, I never had an encounter I thought should be punished by a force greater than gossip. That exception occurred when I was in college and I, through threat of screaming, managed to stop the unwanted advances. The guy in question went on to marry and be a reasonable man. I am not sure that throwing him in jail or forcing him to register as a sex offender would have made the world a better place. I am sure that he and I are lucky things turned out the way they did.Sex is complicated. Men and women, especially in today's world, are trying to map out amorphous territory. Some things are stark. Violence and rape are rather like pornography: we know it when we see it. But the brush of an unwanted hand, the leer of an unlike co-worker, the come-on of the dissed datee: are these things we want to criminalize? Even more frightening to me, the mom of three boys, are these things we won't to lock up our minors for? I think we just need to take a deep breath and step back. Because, really, does every unasked for butt slap deserve a civic response? I don't think so.

I live in a liberal town in North Carolina that has gone haywire about kids and drinking and drugs. The push here--and in many other places--is to jail parents who "push" (read allow) alcohol on their children. There is actually a large billboard that parks about town that reads:

BUY YOUR KID A BEER. GO TO JAIL.

GROW UP PARENTS--IT'S AGAINST THE LAW.

There is a townwide website where parents are encouraged to go online and publically pledge they will never allow alcohol to be served to anyone under 21 in their home. Other parents are encouraged to use this website as a way to judge whether the parents provide a "safe home" for other kids to go to. If one says we might have a better world (I suspect we would see a dramatic decrease in binge drinking for starters.) if the drinking age were lowered to 18, one is accused of being a delusional parent who DOESN'T UNDERSTAND HOW DANGEROUS ALCOHOL AND DRUGS INHERENTLY ARE! The schools have hot lines where kids can report other kids or other kids' parents.

So, please, Gary, don't come to my town. You might end up jailed and possibly shunned!

I love the term coined on "Scrubs": bajingo. It sounds so appealing! When I was in college, we used the word quim, a word used in Britain. My friend Leslie calls it a biscuit, another male friend prefers muff. When my daughter was little she said bagina. I think this is a case where the more, the merrier.

I'm with the wife. I have kids in high school and I hope they never treat the principal and other administrators with such calvalier rudeness. And before you write me off as a right winger, let me say that I am all for challenging bad school policy. I do it all the time and encourage my kids to do so. But those who work in the public schools are poorly paid and constantly hassled. No one, not parent nor child, should call a teacher or an administrator at home unless it's a bona fide emergency.

I have read all three of these books as has my "anti-barbie, hates pink, thinks girlie-girls lack soul" 12 year old daughter. We think they are fun-mostly because they are about an ordinary girl with a supercool dad and--whoa!--check out those bad guys. Neither I nor my daughter think for a minute that Bella holds a candle to Buffy (although there are alarming similarities between Edward and Angel). These books strike me as the modern equivalent to Harlequin romances or Barbara Cartland, both of whom I read while working dead end jobs in high school. Face it, romance sells.

And, despite what a wimp I think Bella is--and I hope against hope that Edward will turn her (don't you just love Rosalie?)--I do appreciate her tale of stupid teen love. If we are lucky, we've all been there. If all my daughter read were Ms. Meyer's books, I'd be alarmed. But, ultimately, I'm thrilled there's yet another series about a girl that my daughter reads. The real issue is why aren't there more Buffys in YA literature.