I belong to a book club that is very loosely organized. We meet at Starbucks, we rotate the responsibility of choosing books, we read whatever sounds good to the current decider*, we meet when we are finished with the book, and then we spend about ten minutes talking about the book and two hours talking about everything else. It works out really well.
Recently, one of the other participants suggested bringing the Teenager along, so I invited her. She likes Starbucks, so she readily agreed to come providing that I forked over the big bucks for the venti hot chocolate.
As I parked the car, she said, "I probably won't say very much. After all, I'm just a teenager".
She was missing the entire point of the book club, which is to talk (and, ok, I'll admit it- to drink coffee). We wanted her to talk. That was why we had invited her. I love talking to teenagers. If I had to decide between spending four hours with a group of toddlers or a group of teenagers, I would pick the teenagers every time. I enjoy talking to most teenagers more than I like talking to some adults. Sometimes I don't get everything they're saying- I'm not exactly fluent in teenager- but I still enjoy listening to them.
When little kids start talking, it's usually cute and sometimes insightful, and they don't always get the words quite right because they're just learning, and sometimes they talk all the time and ask "why?" fifty times a day and you go hide in the bathroom just to get a break. Then the little kids become teenagers, and all of a sudden they stop talking and start staring at the screens on their phones. Adults complain about how the teenagers never talk to them, but when they do talk, then we tell them "you don't really know anything yet; you're just a teenager", or "wait until you grow up, and then you'll really have something to complain about, because you're just a teenager", or "you think that now, but wait until you have to start paying your own bills and then you'll change your mind, because you're just a teenager".
Recently, I saw an article someone posted on Facebook about how young millennials aren't very involved in civic life. Perhaps one reason is because they still have "well, you're just a teenager, what do you know?" ringing in their ears.
Sometimes, teenagers have a way of bringing up uncomfortable subjects, like the time that the Teenager informed me that her generation is really annoyed with the rest of us, because we are leaving them a big mess to clean up. Ouch. I suspect that I felt the same way when I was a teenager, although that was a long time ago. Looking around at the world right now, I can see why adolescents might feel a little resentment towards their elders.
I'm not saying that the teenagers are always right, or that I am not guilty of the "you might feel a bit differently when you're older" answer myself, but I also remember the feeling of dismissal that I got from my own elders, back in the prehistoric cave days when I was a teenager and I would say that when I had my own cave, I was going to use another kind of firewood or paint different animals on the walls** and the adults would all roll their eyes and tell me to go off and do the cave chores.
So, to the Teenager: you are not just a teenager. I may not always agree with you, or think that you're right, but I still want to hear what you have to say- or read what you have to text.
* If you're wondering what we are currently reading, it's "The Underground Railroad" by Colson Whitehead. My selection.
**I'm not really that old. I was a teenager in the 1980's. But some days it feels like I'm a lot older.
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