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GenePool
Humor
Whatever
I have gradually come to realize, through painstaking observations over time, that I am sharing my home with at least one, and possibly as many as two teenagers. These young adults have evidently taken the place of my children, Becky and Tim. They even go by the same names, which is very convenient.
I never really appreciated how this sort of thing can sneak up on a person until I started going through it myself. Back when Becky was an infant, I'd upon occasion take her out into the world-- either in a stroller or on a torture device of some kind that would affix her to my back in the most painful way imaginable-- and get curious and/or dirty looks from people who for some reason assumed this was not my child. I still don't know why this happened-- most babies I'm familiar with require at minimum a male contribution-- but it did. And now I'm back to getting dirty looks when I go out in public with her. But for entirely different reasons. Becky is thirteen, but she's also five foot six and has a developing figure, and apparently I don't look old enough to pass as her father.
There are other signs of impending teenager-hood, which, if you yourself are a father or intend to be one, you might want to be on the lookout for.
"Whatever"-- This is my daughter's favorite word. She employs it liberally in conversations. Roughly translated, it means "you might have a point, but I'm really not interested in figuring it out." If the emphasis is applied almost entirely on the second syllable, you may as well just shut up and leave the room, as there is no chance you're getting anything across.
Feminine products-- One day, you will find yourself wondering why your home suddenly has two or three times as many packages of pads and/or tampons lying around. Is there a sorority hiding in your basement? Or is there another use for these items that you have not considered-- stanching an open chest wound, say-- that some other person in your home is now actively using them for? No. The answer is simple, and far more horrifying than you will be willing to openly consider.
Mood swings-- You know how the wife gets sometimes? Think it can't get any worse than that? Hahaha.
Learning to hate the internet-- Both of my children are so internet savvy I sometimes have to ask them to help me access porn. Making matters much worse, both of them believe they have an inalienable right to the internet, which is something of a problem as my computer is the only one in the house that's wired to it. In a way, this is good because the alternative is to provide them with access in their rooms, and I sort of like being able to walk in and see what conversations are taking place between Becky and her roughly fifteen thousand friends, all of whom also have instant messaging and are online RIGHT NOW. But the downside is if I want to actually accomplish something-- like write this column, which I'm doing with my son perched on my right shoulder-- I have to kick them off and ruin their entire lives. Tim, by the way, wants the internet so he can visit a site called "Neopets". As near as I can tell, "Neopets" is a site that teaches chidren about commerce and market trading in a benign and amusing little package that appears to resemble the slave trade.
Dirty jokes-- It used to be I could make the occasional sly and mildly dirty remark and get away with it. Now Becky and Tim both get the joke. Like tonight, for instance. We have a cat named Moki who is a non-spayed adult female. All of the male cats have been fixed. So every few months or so she's in a total state of hell, and doesn't mind telling the entire neighborhood about it. (By which I mean, she can be heard from very far away, as she is not allowed to leave the house.) Her cry is so loud and insistent-- it sounds like "NOWWWWWW"-- that one cannot help but make fun of her. So my suggestion was, why not buy a pager, tape it to Moki's ass, and then call the number over and over again until she shuts up. I did not know that my daughter (and of course she was in earshot) was even familiar with the concept of a vibrator until she laughed at this plan.
Wanderlust-- On any given weekday there is a better than even chance one or both of my children will end up in a place different from where I expected them to be when I got up that morning. This is not so bad, as they have cell phones, which they occasionally use and, even more occasionally, turn on. Today Tim called to ask if he could bike down to the McDonalds to meet a friend named Grant (who I may have met once) to eat and "do homework." There are a few things wrong with this request. First, I do not know where he got the money to buy food at McDonalds, as I did not give it to him and he is not currently gainfully employed. It's entirely possible Tim has been mugging smaller children at school. Second, he wishes to ride his bike through a shopping mall parking lot in December. Which is, um, dangerous. Third, he and Grant sitting down in the McDonalds and actually doing homework together is about as likely as me winning a Pulitzer for this column. "Sure," I said. "Just be careful." Because he's probably going to go anyway. Hell, he probably called me from the McDonalds.
The phone does not belong to you-- I fear this is only going to get worse with time. I field four or five phone calls a night for one or another of my children. Usually, I know who it is. For example, Becky has a friend named Virginia who always says "Um, can I speak to Becky?" whenever she calls. I have thus labeled her "Um Virginia." Tim has a friend named Jonathan that speaks so loudly on the phone that I actually no longer put my ear right up to the receiver when I answer, just in case it's him. And every now and then a call comes in from someone I don't know, at which time I am forced to ask. A couple of nights ago a girl named Ariel called. Ariel evidently cannot say her own name upon request, because I had to inform my daughter there was somebody named after an Outkast song (Hey Ya) on the phone.
Music-- You will quickly find that your child has developed somewhat ovine musical tastes. And there isn't anything you can do about it. Becky has become-- despite my best intentions-- a devotee of a radio station called KISS 108. They play top 40 music non-stop without any apparent regard to the quality of said music. You have a station just like it wherever you live. Anyway, she expressed a strong desire to call the station in order to request a particular song (it doesn't matter which one; they all sound pretty much the same) to which I said, "Why? They're going to play it four or five more times in the next hour anyway." She agreed that this might be the case, but that if she called then perhaps they would play it SOONER. I just... I don't even know where to begin.
Psychotic friends-- Having listened at length to Becky discussing the various political intrigues that make up her daily scholastic life, I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that all of her friends are completely insane. But that's another thing I-- and you-- will have to get used to: what for a normal person is a minor social faux pas can become transformed by a talented teenage storyteller into the moral equivalent of a triple homicide.
As I said, these are merely signs of the horrors
to come. For instance, I have yet to encounter the sheer joy of
dating that I'm fairly sure is just around the corner. Hopefully,
by then I will have gotten over the fact that neither child still
fits in the stroller in the attic.
© 2004, Gene Doucette
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