My Theory and Welcome to It

It was the year of 1993 when I began to understand why the number thirteen is considered unlucky. That was when my oldest child officially became a teenager.

Now, it's my theory that when a child hits adolescence certain cells in his brain, the ones which make the rest of the human population sane and reasonable, go dormant. This dormancy is evident by certain behavioral changes in the child.

One of the first changes to take place when a child becomes a teen is what I have termed teenage logic. The following is a prime example of what I'm talking about.

When my oldest son was in the 7th grade he decided he'd set his alarm clock for 5:30 am to give himself ample time to prepare for school. Sure enough, the first day of school at 5:30 in the morning, his alarm (which sounded like the warning alarm that alerts prison officials of an escape attempt) tore apart the quiet of our house. Of course, oldest son slept through the noise.

After peeling myself from my bedroom ceiling, I stumbled upstairs to his room to awaken him. I banged on the wall, flipped his light switch on and off, and yelled his name in an effort to stir signs of life in him.

Finally, he opened an eye half way and said, "I don't have to get up 'til 6:30."

"Then why did you set your alarm for 5:30?" I asked.

"To let me know that I have an hour before I have to get up and get ready." ARRRRRGH!

Another result of the cell dormancy phenomenon is the development of a language called Teenage-eese, the official language of teenagers. In this language words that an adolescent learned at the knees of his parents takes on new definitions.

For instance, once, while in the kitchen, the ceiling above me started rumbling as if a professional wrestling free-for-all was being held up stairs.

"What's going on up there?" I hollered.

"Nothing!" my teenager answered.

Nothing, in Teenage-eese, means, "We're holding a free-for-all wrestling tournament up here, but we don't want you to know about it because we'll get grounded" Got that right.

Another interesting fact is that all adolescent people suffer from a temporary loss of hearing. It seems that they can't talk unless they speak loud enough for the whole county to hear, and
the volume at which their music (boy, am I using that term loosely) is played takes noise pollution to a whole new level. All three of my teens would turn up the volume on the home stereo to decibels I never even knew existed.

If I turned the stereo down, to say the noise level of a jumbo jet as it screams down the runway for takeoff, I'd receive complaints that the music was barely audible. At least this explains why my sons' favorite word during this period of time was, "What?!"

I don't know, but I 'd be willing to bet that more anti-depressants are prescribed to parents suffering the pains of the teen years than to any other group of people. But there is good news.

You see, this cell dormancy phenomenon only lasts about seven to eight years . . . per child. Here's hoping that those of you living with teenagers can survive that long.