Apparently every 26 seconds a teenage girl gets pregnant in the United States. I was one of the 26th seconds.

18 years old, peeing on a plastic stick, and saying "Well, I know it's going to be negative..." Minutes later the cheap test still hasn't displayed any results. It's shaken a bit, as if a good shaking could speed the results and out of no where two pink lines, only slightly visible, peak through the white fabric: Pregnant. A jaw drops, another begins to sob, and an akward laugh from an uncomfortable boyfriend. Naturally, the cheap test is wrong so a more expensive test is purchased quickly. It's taken again, quickly displaying the word on a digital screen: Pregnant.

A year ago, almost to date, that was me emptying my bladder on a plastic stick. I was in my senior year of high school, with the coolest boyfriend, like, ever. He'd pay for everything and we just had so much in common. I knew two weeks into our relationship, my first REAL relationship, that it was time to BANG.

He had picked me up from work and taken me to a real high school party--in the basement of a Maytag. The room was thick with cigarette smoke, and a girl on the stairs pulled a bag of marijuana from her cleavage as her boyfriend stood behind her, reaching around to play with her navel. On the other side of the party, kids I knew from high school were drinking something out of red plastic cups and bouncing a ping pong ball around, Beer Pong as they call it these days. We stayed for awhile but decided to leave since neither of us cared for cigarette smoke.

We ended up in the back alley behind our high school. My boyfriend took me there because across the street in the woods was his childhood "club house". He showed it to me along with bottles filled with urine. Supposedly a bum that lived inside the old club house liked to bottle and collect his pee.. Another man's toilet bowl contents are another man's treasure.

Before we knew it, we were in his car looking through some of the junk he had in the middle console. There was plastic toys old girlfriends had left, a pair of 3-D glasses, papers, and some condoms his little brother had given him as a Christmas gift one year. At the time, I wasn't even thinking about sex but I coaxed him into his backseat after climbing through the SUV. He followed and eventually we did the deed.

Fast forward--It's April 2008, a few months after our first time, and I'm peeing on a stick. BAM I'm pregnant (not prego ANNOYING) and PISSED. Abortion? No. I wasn't sure how I'd feel afterward even though I'm not religious. Adoption? No. If I'm going to make the thing, I'm keepin' it damn it! Push a cantelope out of my hoo hoo? I guess.Oh yeah, and my really cool boyfriend leaves and joins the Navy.

So, now I have a 3.5 month old daughter, who I love. And I'm married to my really cool boyfriend that knocked me up, who I also love. Every part of being a "teen mother" is hard. To my family, I am not a normal mother: I still need help and assistance; I'm still a baby. To friends, I'm playing house earlier. I am not taken so seriously.

Believe it or not, there are CHILDREN out there that TRY to conceive. I've berated and scolded one of these stupid, stupid children before. She just wanted to be a Mommy so, so, so bad. Children TRYING to have children is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Not to mention the most selfish, which children are by nature. So of course they want a REAL LIFE baby...for like 5 minutes. Then please, take the damn batteries out. This thing won't stop pooping yellow and green stuff.

I'm 19 now and because i have "teen" in my age, I'm automatically stupid and irresponsible because other people with teen in their age are stupid, stupid, stupid. I'm a damn good mother though. I've lost all my friends for my daughter and I never leave my house either. My husband is out fightin' fer the Greatest Country Ever in The WORLD for our daughter. Having children, at any age, takes great responsibility.

Not all "teen mothers" are dumb though, just a lot of them.