dangerous date?

Something happened to me this week that has happened twice before, but always feels a bit strange.

A mother was describing what happened this summer to her fifteen year-old, somewhat boy-crazy daughter. He daughter came home from a party that she had gone to up at the beach. The party was at someones house and this kid knew that kid, who knew kids from another town, who brought other kids, who knew other kids, so there were kids there from all over.

The girl spent the evening and into the night flirting, and maybe a little more, with a real cute boy she met. He was cute, he had the same sense of humor she did, and she was hoping to see him again.

Two days later the boy called and the daughter talked to him on the phone for over an hour. A few things that were mentioned caught the mother's attention. When the girl got off the phone the mother asked a few more questions. Then the mother got upset.

Later that night the mother made a few phone calls. The next day she told her daughter that she was not allowed to go out with that boy.

The daughter was upset and demanded an explanation. The mother cried, but avoided the question. After an hour or two of evasive answers the daughter was not accepting the decision. The mother told the girl to call her father -- the parents had been divorced for about five years, the daughter saw her father regularly.

The daughter got right on the phone and called her father. After fifteen minutes of a private discussion she hung-up the phone and ran to her room crying.

The father had told her that she couldn't see that boy because he was her brother, well, her half-brother technically.

Keeping secrets is always risky.