New Dating Rituals

So, I've already admitted that my hubby and I very rarely get the chance to go out sans kids. So, maybe this new thing we saw last night isn't so new...we went to Olive Garden (yep, on a Saturday Night) and were told it'd be 35 mins wait, ok. We can do that. (No sense going from restaurant to restaurant where the wait just keeps getting longer, right?) More than an hour later as we were walking to our seat finally we had made a few discoveries.
Apparently, last night was homecoming or some other fancy dance thing. (I'm a little out of that scene) so there were scads of teenagers milling prancing around. Some of these teenagers succeeded in looking very grown-up and to some degree sophisticated. Others, succeeded in looking like HOOKERS! My hubby and I had to push our lower jaws back into place more than a few times and push our eyeballs back into the sockets. Some of these young girls looked like street-walkers. And the amazing thing to me...surely their mothers saw them leaving the house like that...and allowed them to continue walking! Ok, maybe there is nothing really new about this. When I was in school I definitely tried to push the envelope of propriety sometimes, but my mom (thanks mom!) reigned in my attempts at trying out what I was sure was being grown-up and sophisticated. I now know that there is nothing grown up or sophisticated about all of your parts hanging out for the world to see. And if I wasn't sure of it before...I am after last night. Some of the dresses were so short that I just watched (kind of like you watch a wreck about to happen-you don't really want to see but can't tear your eyes off of the ensuing carnage) waiting for a stiff wind (we do after all live on the coast! Stiff winds happen often!
Now, here's the thing that really seems to have changed. These high school "couples" appeared to be very studious at not being a couple. The boys walked 3 steps ahead of the girls they were with (hello, isn't that the height of rudeness?) and both the boys and the girls spent half the time TEXTING! I don't know, maybe they were texting each other? When we were on dates (back in the dark ages) you usually went with someone you liked and you talked or held hands or something. Today's teenagers (now I sound really old) can't hold hands because texting requires both hands I guess.
I was heartened to see a couple of old-fashioned couples towards the end of our wait though. Couples not holding cell-phones but hanging on each other as if they couldn't get close enough...Now, to me, that is the picture of a healthy teenage relationship!