Last week, after Christmas, the teenagers and I traveled down to see the Grandparents of No at their homestead. Upon arrival, I discovered that the Son of Never Stops Eating had left his deodorant at home.
Mom, he said, exasperated, I don't need deodorant! I'm on vacation!
That is life with teenagers, right there: teenagers are often odiferous attitude-filled buckets of sass and stress added to a substantial amount of idealism mixed in with the idea that everything worth knowing, they know and anyone over the age of 30 has forgotten. The whole mess is spiced up with a dash of believing that the generations before them have completely and irrevocably messed the place up and it's up to them to fix it as best they can (this generation of teenagers might actually be right about that; sorry, guys.)
On social media sites, it's often popular to bash teenagers as a group whenever something in the community goes awry- or even just for fun. Car doing doughnuts in the school parking lot? Must be teenagers. Danged teenagers have no respect; it's not like when we were growing up when even the thought of wrongdoing would earn us a whipping from our father and a public flogging in the town square. Vandalism? Teenagers. Rude, entitled behavior? Snowflake teenagers. Lazy with no work ethic whatsoever? Entitled teenagers. Crime of any kind? Definitely teenagers, with too much time on their hands. One teenager messes up, they're all to blame. Teenagers are viewed as the Borg Collective of humankind.
I'm sure that since the dawn of time, old geezers have been complaining about the young whippersnappers up to no good with their weird haircuts and odd fashion sense and their lack of work ethic and their strange ideas about almost any issue affecting humanity and, last but not least, their ability to sleep soundly until 2 PM and eat everything in sight that isn't frozen solid.
Adults are guilty of a lot of the same sins as teenagers, but we've lived longer and we should definitely know better- and no one blames adults as a group for the sins of one grownup. One entitled, rude adult is one entitled, rude adult; one entitled, rude teenager is to condemn every teenager walking the planet at this point in time.
Honestly, you couldn't pay me to be a teenager again for anything. If you're a teenaged girl, you can't dress correctly no matter what you wear. College tuition is a runaway freight train headed your way, your adults are probably nagging you about what you're going to do after high school, you're beginning to learn about stressful adult stuff like driving and working, everyone over the age of 30 automatically assumes you're up to no good any time you go anywhere in a group (or even by yourselves) and there's all kinds of pressure to do or not do. Being a teenager in the 1980's wasn't anywhere near as complicated as being a teenager in the late 2010's seems to be.
Yes, I know there are plenty of teenagers who manage to get themselves into big trouble. Adults manage to do that, too, but without the collective blame that teenager wrongdoing seems to create. I also know that there are plenty of teenagers getting up at the crack of dawn to go to band or athletic practice, spending their weekends working a part-time job, spending part of their summers doing good deeds, taking college-level classes, helping with the care of older and/or disabled family members, and basically trying to get to adulthood without running their personal lives off the road too many times before that all-important 18th birthday.
So, for my teenagers-yes, I like to pester you about college and community service hours and saving your money and wearing deodorant and cleaning your rooms and driving (at least I don't have to nag about data usage anymore; thank you unlimited data plan!), but I also respect the serious amount of work that you're putting into your life. Being a teenager is serious, stressful stuff and I do respect it even if you think I don't. Now, go work on those scholarship applications.
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