Back in my high school days (a hundred years ago if you ask my kids), you were either going   steady or you weren’t.  Boy, not anymore.  If any of you have a high schooler now, bless your heart.  You know that it’s just not that simple anymore.

This is how it works now (you may want to carry this around for later reference):

First, if you notice a cute boy, you try to make “eye contact.”  If he makes contact back, then you’re on a roll.  If he calls you once, that’s not called anything.  If he calls you twice, then you are officially “sorta talking.”

If he calls you a bunch of times, then at some point you cross the line between “sorta talking” to “talking.”  The girl usually finds out this has happened when someone asks the guy, “Hey, what’s up with you and her?” and his answer is, “Yeah, I guess we’re talking.” 

This is usually a good thing in the eyes of the girl, although I’ve also heard, “I sure hope he doesn’t think we’re talking!”  If you’re not clued into what this means, you may think your daughter has just lost it, since she just hung up with some guy, and was surely talking to him.

The next step is “sorta together.”  After you’ve been “talking” for a while, and you know that he feels the same way about you as you do about him, well then, you’re “sorta together.”  One of the sure signs of “sorta together” is when you start writing “I love So ‘n So” all over your books and hands.  Or maybe write his name with sunscreen on your stomach.

Then he starts hanging around your house a lot . . . you know, starts becoming part of the family.  The parents meet him, know his first and last name, and he tries to impress you with playing with the little brothers and sisters.  Then he starts holding your hand in public places. Whoa!  You’ve finally reached “together.”

After about five months of this, two things can happen.  Either you can’t live without each other and wherever anyone sees you, they expect to see him, too.  That’s when you’re “like married.”

Or you get really tired of being smothered, you long for singleness, so you go back to making “eye contact” with other guys.  He finds out about it, breaks up with you, and you go back to Step One.

Sometimes it may be with the same guy, much to Mom’s dismay.

So, you can be talking without speaking, sorta together while still single, and you can be together just before you’re single again.  And you can be like married without ever going to a church.

Back in my day, it was either an I.D. bracelet or nothing.