Oh, to be 14. Or pregnant. Just not both. Or either really.

I don't know why it is that when you become pregnant for the first time that suddenly any tiny tid bit of personal information regarding the little peanut growing in your uterus becomes public domain.

Cart blanche on Twenty Questions? Can you really see yourself asking a woman in the grocery store, who is by no means pregnant, how much weight she's gained in the past forty weeks? Put a prosthetic belly under her shirt and suddenly the gloves come off.

No, I am totally not with-child. Not in the least. I'm loving the idea of sporting a bikini for the summer even if it does invite questions like, "Aren't you, like, Justine's stepmom?" Teenager for "Are you stoned out of your mind? Where do you get off thinking you can wear anything besides a moo moo to the pool? Enter motherhood, exit mid-drift revealing clothing."

Over the past few days I've exchanged conversations with people who were thinking of becoming pregnant, and so were curious about my two-fold journey down that lane. How much weight did I pack on? How did I manage to get my little darlings to sleep through the night without having to stuff a pillow over their face? Did I swell up like a balloon at the end of my pregnancy? What kind of birth did I have? Did I tear? Drugs, did I use them? [Yes, quite heavily as a matter of fact.]

But I think it's the most absurd yet equally amazing thing that pregnancy and kids can truly tear down the walls of ambiguity, and break out the sentiments of brutal honesty. When you enter into pregnancy, you become a part of this secret society of motherhood where you realize you all go through similar journeys to bear children, your hearts bleed the same as you experience heartache together, and likewise can totally relate to the necessity of scrutinizing your child's poop for about the first four years from infancy to toddler. Unbelievable.

Then I sit next to one of these grown up babies at the pool yesterday. A clan of teenagers, in fact. Something I fear and loathe my boys to become. Worse yet: something my boys will like.

As the valley girl clique readied to sunbathe beside me, I stumbled through Sense & Sensibility, while one of the five vixens bared her bikini body for all the rest to see. I didn't look up. Their squeals pierced my ears and made me burn my eyes deeper into Austen's novel even though I cannot get past the nineteenth century lingo.

"OOOOOOOooohmigod. Seeeery-us-leeeee, your boobs look huge!"
Eh, what?

"I know, right? Aren't they uuuuh-may-zing?!"

Then I revert in my mind back to the cart blanche mode, that I also inherited since having children. And I realize that she's not pregnant and so I can't ask her a brutally honest question like, "Sweetheart, if you only knew where your leopard print bikini, 32DD boobs, navel ring, and naivete are going to take you in life you would be so inclined to keep your nose in the books instead of the help wanted ads for the adult film industry, right?"

No, no. She's something far different than a pregnant woman. She's a teenager, and unfortunately she's quite the opposite. Her demeanor invites all the questions like the former, but she however is more cunning and will deliver no answer.