I don’t know how it happens, but when your children morph into
teenagers, they suddenly know everything. It’s like they go to
sleep one night as perfectly ordinary preteens and they wake up
three inches taller with a bad attitude and all the knowledge of
the universe stuck inside their heads.
I don’t know how it happens, but when your children morph into teenagers, they suddenly know everything. It’s like they go to sleep one night as perfectly ordinary preteens and they wake up three inches taller with a bad attitude and all the knowledge of the universe stuck inside their heads.
And that is how you know you have a teenager on your hands.
Suddenly you are the most stupid person on the planet. Seriously. You could be Albert Einstein and you’d still be an idiot. You could be a member of Mensa and still not be nearly as smart as your teenager. And teenagers are not shy about letting you know that. In fact, they don’t even have to say “You’re stupid” to your face.
They have a look.
It’s a look that is a cross between “Holy cow, do I need to tell you that you are stupid?” and “Really, I’m sitting next to a moron.” It comes complete with looks of shocked disbelief, raised eyebrows and an incredibly annoying smirk.
I’m quite familiar with the look, in case you were wondering.
The most amazing part of this transformation is that teenagers who know everything have no idea what they are thinking. I know, right? How the heck does that work? Well, let’s take for example, your ordinary teen who has forgotten something of minor importance in their life like say, showing up to history class. For an entire semester.*
When the parent finally confronts said teen, the parent will say, “Did you think you’d get away with never going to class?” That will be followed by the inevitable, “What on earth were you thinking?” To which the teenager – who knows everything there is to know – will answer, “I don’t know.”
Pardon me, but just two minutes prior that teenager knew everything. Do you need to know about quantum physics? That teen has the answers. The dramatic irony in “Romeo and Juliet?” That teen has the answers, along with act, scene and line numbers. But if you say something like, “Honey, why did you light the balcony on fire?” they will not know what they were thinking.**
And this, my friends, is why parents of teens have dented foreheads. We spend a lot of time banging our heads on our desks, hoping that the painful headache that will arrive once the banging is over will enable us to forget that our teenagers do not under any circumstances know what they are thinking, despite their superhuman ability to know everything.
In fact, they do not even know IF they are thinking. Really. Ask any teen who has done something involving say, the police, a high school principal, the chemistry lab and several pounds of bananas, what he or she was thinking before the chem lab and bananas came into the picture and each one of them will say, “I don’t know.” ***
Seriously. I may be just a stupid parent, but my head is getting very dented from trying to understand that logic.
I mean, we have an entire generation who are so smart that they believe they do not need parents around. In fact, they would be especially happy if parents would accommodate them by leaving the country until they graduated from high school. Sadly, very few teenagers ever have this dream come true. So the ones that are left must deal with the idiots they live with who provide them with clothing, food and a balcony to light on fire.****
But then when they do something particularly, um, idiotic, they cannot for the life of them figure out what they are thinking or indeed, if any thought process whatsoever took place.*****
Yeah, I think you understand my frustration. Also? Why I need a new desk.
* I am required by my signed, notarized deal with Junior to inform you that this is an example and that Junior has never missed a history class.
** I am required by the same signed, notarized deal with Junior to inform you that he has not lit our balcony on fire. Yet.
*** Yeah. Same deal requires me to inform you that Junior has not taken chemistry yet, but reserves the right to figure out what he could do with a boatload of bananas in that classroom.
**** Again, he hasn’t lit the balcony on fire. But he does think his parents are idiots.
***** This is Junior. All the way.
