Blow, Blow, Blow Your Boat
Abby Sunderland found adrift, but who will rescue her parents?
Our pubescent years may be solidly behind us, but we think we know a thing or two about women coming of age.
For example, normal girls aspiring to adulthood spend their days hopelessly scribbling the names of their paramours in the margins of notebooks. And then they spend their nights stalking said boys on Facebook. Normal lassies-in-training wish for princess-inspired prom dresses, awkward good-night kisses, and hasty back seat makeout sessions in minivans. Normal girls pull their hemlines up high and their necklines down low, and scoff at the creepy men disgusting enough to leer at them.
While secretly celebrating their unharnessed femme fatale, of course.
Are we spot on or what?
'Cause if those are the indisputable criteria, then for all intents and purposes, 16-year-old Abby Sunderland is most certainly not normal. In fact, the open sea — not a neighborhood Justin Bieber clone — was the only thing that made her swoon.
But like any teenaged girl with fire, she set out on the thrill of the chase. On the water, that is.
You see, Abby's wet dreams consisted of, well, actual water. Since she was 13, she wanted to be the youngest person — male or female — to circumnavigate the globe. By herself.
With a nonconformist Californian family, a brother, Zac, who'd accomplished the very same feat last July, and a charmed existence in teenager-focused Thousand Oaks, anything was possible. Shiptastic Wild Eyes and Abby joined forces, and the parental-anxiety-attack quest was on like Donkey Kong.
Until it wasn't.
Just past the halfway point of her journey, heartbreak rocked her boat, as it goes for most teens. The waves went buck wild, and all of the sudden, Abby lost contact with her family early Thursday morning. But a few knights in shining armor, a Qantas Airlines crew, spotted the damsel in distress. Wild Eyes (the boat) threw all discretion — and its mast — to the wind, but Abby herself only got a rough trip. Phew.
Parents, we think you're warranted in breathing a sigh of relief now. Be grateful when your Lindsay-Lohan-lookalike creation comes home complaining of itching "down there." 'Cause at least your daughter is not in danger on a 40-foot long vessel, and whatever she's enduring won't scar her for life.
Seriously, folks, would you ever let your kid do such a thing?
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