That teenagers need help is a universally recognized fact. Here are ten pointers for the confused teen, not necessarily to be taken one hundred percent seriously.
Or perhaps you don't. If you can smell yourself, then the whole world smells with you! Take a deep breath and prepare to use that magic, recently invented cure-all. Yes, it's called soap and water! Shakespeare told us that a rose would smell as sweet by any other name, but not if it's called Jimmy and he is sixteen.
Having said that, however, you are wrong much, much more than they are. Parents are only human and as the film world illustrates so clearly, it is more often than not the child who is the spawn of the devil. Haven't you ever seen “The Omen” and its abysmal sequels? The best way to counter their, as you perceive, innate wrongness, is to follow the words of the famous British wit, Quentin Crisp (who was never a father himself, for some strange reason). He said, “The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.” Plus ca change.
“Hey” Teacher! Leave those kids alone!”, goes the old Pink Floyd song. Well, that's pretty much how the majority of educators will act. If you allow them to get on with their job they will leave you alone! They do not hate you, in fact many see you as nothing more than a product. Some people assemble cars, teachers assemble people and they do it dispassionately on the whole. Of course, it may just be your luck to get the one truly psychotic teacher in the whole world. This is generally how it will seem every time you get punished or receive an F grade but really, the truth is that you will remember them a whole lot longer than they will remember you.
Not true, really. At the risk of making you paranoid then, yes, plenty of people are looking at you. The whole world, in fact, is gazing at you through a large pair of binoculars. The teenage world at least. The rest of it doesn't really give a flying fish through a dilating donut. However, take heart. The act of looking is far, far removed from the art of seeing. These people are not thinking about what you look like. They are wondering what you think they look like. Tell them, go on. Don't be shy.
This is because you have reached a stage in your life when your body has reached adult proportions but that's about it. Your brain may be catching up, but it takes time. A long time. There are these things call hormones coursing through your body and this guarantees that if you are female you will be pretty much clinically insane until the age of eighteen. If you are male this condition may well continue until the age of twenty five - or even longer. As the American poet Randall Jarrell once said, “The American male does not mature until he has exhausted all other options.” You just have to live with it.
Really, do you honestly think they have the energy to hate you twenty four hours a day? It's a much lower level, slow burn process than that. It probably started when you were about two seconds old and will increase in its levels each year till you hit twenty one (or twenty five in the case of males). This is roughly the time between when you started crying and the time at which you will stop moaning. When your Born Again, Bible-reading mother becomes Pro-Choice, you will know that things have turned a certain corner and perhaps it is time to move out. Perhaps this is just as well - as Oscar Wilde said - “Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.”
Honestly. It's true. As they make sex less secretive, they rob it of its power. Many teenagers don't do the “Wild Thing” (as Vonnegut called it) until their twenties, if that isn't a contradiction in terms! What they were really doing when they told you they were doing it with Billie-Jo the Cheerleader was revising for the forthcoming maths exam. That's why they now have a place promised at Harvard and you are going to therapy. There is no shame to using a helping hand either; as Woody Allen once said, “it's sex with someone you love”.
They are not, however, anywhere near as cool as they think they are. They may ostensibly encourage promiscuity and lack of respect by encouraging you to date and to stick up for yourself. Take one step out of line and they will sure as hell lose those long fought for and thought about liberal credentials. Think Susan from “Desperate Housewives” and you have an idea of the true reality of your parents' karma. One small, tiny, minuscule step from being the tyrants you truly know they are, parents are not to be trusted. Those late night confessionals where they seem so understanding always turn in to a week long grounding in the morning.
Some teenagers stay in their room all day because they think they are unpopular. If you are male it is likely that you are skulking in there because you are doing unsayable things with or to your unspeakables. If female, it is because you are pouting in front of the mirror bemoaning your lack of enormous mammary glands. However, many teenagers are surprised at just how popular they really are, especially when they misbehave. JFK once said “the worse I do, the more popular I get”. He may have been talking about Cuba but a little naughtiness goes a long way in the eyes of one's teenage peers. Be a devil every now and again!
Don't worry about your looks, guys! Most teenagers get hung up at some point about how you perceive yourself - or more accurately how you are perceived by others. You probably think that you are ugly, spotty and overweight. You probably are in some combination or permutation - however vague, imagined or real. However, you must never, ever admit this to your parents or your peers. “Beauty is only sin deep”, as Saki once said and he was probably right. Encourage yourself to misbehave a little more and you will soon gain that all important life confidence. But not too much. Harvard is cheaper than therapy in the long run!
