Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

The Adolescent Years: Scarier Than Halloween

By Bob Wire, 10-20-10

	Does this mean I can go ahead and sell your Rescue Heroes™ on eBay?

It’s getting harder to bend my children to my will. Mostly because I woke up one day recently and discovered that my two little kids had disappeared, and were replaced by moody, largely unresponsive, hormone-addled adults. Well, not adults, really, somewhere in between. If they were frogs, they would be tadpoles with legs.

One clear indication that my subservient little charges have gone over the wall, if only in their own heads, is the way they’ll respond to any request or demand from myself or Barb. They used to say “okay.” Now they say “I know.”

Me: “Hey, your jacket is still on the living room floor.”

Them: “I know.”

Me: “Hey, I’m not just making some existential observation, I’m saying it needs to be picked up.”

“I know.”

Rusty is nearly 14, and recently asked me if Barb and I have started thinking about getting a place of our own. His sister Speaker is 12 and has, uh, turned that corner that, um, girls, you know, go around when they, ah, well… Oh, hell, you know what I mean. If you don’t, talk to her mother. The point is, my little kids are now little teenagers. And all that that implies.

The boy is not that hard to figure out, really. For one thing, I am one. Just bigger. With a checking account. I know what it’s like—I was there myself. I even had the same Justin Bieber hairstyle, only back then I wore it to hide my zit-encrusted forehead. Of course, I do have more sophisticated tastes now, something that comes with age. For example, he likes Family Guy, and I’m more of a Simpsons fan. The other reason he’s easier to deal with is that guys are just wired more simply. Males are pretty straightforward creatures, and few of us mature beyond the emotional age of about 15. Why do you think so many of us still think farts are funny? His needs and desires will pretty much stay the same throughout his life; they’ll just grow more elaborate.

Adolescent girls, on the other hand, are even more mystifying than full-grown women. The capricious, complex, ever-shifting essence of the female of the species is magnified tenfold when they are young adolescents. I have witnessed firsthand the Machiavellian dynamic of Speaker’s circle of middle school friends, and it is as frightening as it is confusing. BFFs during home room, they’ll stab each other in the back before lunch, and then have a sleepover planned by the time they board the bus after school. Alliances are made and broken constantly, like a load of staticky socks in the dryer. And parents, don’t bother to attempt any kind of peacekeeping or cease-fire brokering. To these girls, the Adult World is a hazy, vague concept that exists only to provide transportation, money, and phones with unlimited texting plans.

Barb and I are frequently aghast at the stories Speaker brings home about the way these girls treat each other. They mock their clothes, insult their tastes in music, gossip mercilessly, and deal out devastating emotional attacks that would make Rahm Emanuel seem like Aunt Bee. We are trying to impress upon Speaker that these drama storms are all small potatoes, and middle school is not life or death. High school is.

Young girls have always been able to deliver a crushing blow with little effort. When I was in seventh grade, I used to draw crude, insulting pictures of my younger sister, who was one grade behind me. I’d show them around during recess and get a few sniggers from my buddies. Of course she was furious. Her revenge was devious and simple: she spread a rumor that I had only one testicle. That she was eerily prophetic is beside the point; I was laughed at, pointed at and ridiculed for the rest of my middle school career. I’d put a lot of time and effort into those drawings, man, and she’d laid me low with a single sentence whispered into the right ear.

It’s not just the emotional upheaval that’s the slamming the door on my kids’ innocent childhood. Their five-bucks-a-week allowance has suddenly become a pittance, and even doubling that will be laughably ineffective. Seems like every time I look up from my guitar catalogs, they need some whip-out for something else. They’re going to a movie with friends. They’re hanging out at the mall, and need some walking-around money. They’re going bowling with their buddies. They’re going to Wal-Mart to buy a couple cans of silver spray paint. Say what now?

Hey, I’m all for bankrolling some innocent fun, but I’d like to see something in return. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that they at least pick up after themselves and put away their own stuff. Living with these two is like having that stoner roommate in college who left his food wrappers and containers everywhere, and made furniture out of old pizza boxes rather than throwing them away. Of course, now, it’s also like I’m the headmaster at the Home for the Deaf, since they’re always plugged into their devices and I have to nag them at high volume, hands cupped around my mouth: “I SAID, IF YOU ATE THE LAST RITZ CRACKER THROW AWAY THE EMPTY BOX DON’T PUT IT BACK IN THE CUPBOARD.”

“I know.”

[Bookmark NewWest.net/BobWire and check back frequently. It’s part of a nutritious breakfast.]

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