It has come to my attention that teenagers are the most despicable creatures on earth – worse perhaps than spiders, Al-Qaida, and US politicians.
I know, I know – I should be ashamed. Don’t I realize that teenagers are just misunderstood… that we were all kids once… that our young people are our future… that the death penalty is inhumane?
Not to mention how singling out a particular minority and hating them is frowned upon these days. It’s impossible to open a newspaper or turn on the television without the self-anointed spokesperson of some special interest demanding fair and equal treatment. “Stop bashing gays!” “Equal rights for seniors!” “Skinheads are shiny!” “Necrophiliacs aren’t creepy!” “Don’t look down on dwarfs!” “Dogs are people too!”
Yet no matter how I try to be the bigger and better person, I cannot tame my inner contempt for these contumelious creators of chaos.
Armed with a distorted understanding of adulthood and the insolent perception of having eclipsed the knowledge, life experiences, and general aptitudes of their parents, teenagers flail through life, face-slapping any unfortunate souls who stray near, emboldened by the specious belief they are expanding the frontiers of human emotional experience by caring more deeply, loving more intensely, and hurting more profoundly than anyone ever has before, when in fact they are nothing more than an unstable brood of self-absorbed know-it-alls consumed by the pathos of their own hormone-fueled nihilism (see Kurt Cobain).
My hatred of teens crystallized one weeknight as I was helping my ten year old with her homework. It was roughly seven PM when a warm, early autumn breeze wafted through her open window carrying the hushed mutterings of unfamiliar male voices.
Where we live, it is unusual to have uninvited visitors so close to the house. Curious, all four members of our family (five if you count the dog) came to the window just in time to see three adolescent boys in hoodies walk brazenly to our front door, hoist our newly acquired Halloween pumpkin over their heads, and smash it on our driveway. Dusting their hands in satisfaction, they casually trotted away with modicum urgency, as if such deeds were all in a day’s work.
As any dad would do upon witnessing the grief of his two young daughters gazing down upon the shattered carcass of their Halloween dreams heaped forlornly on the asphalt below, I jumped into the car and gave chase.
I caught up with them about a block away, sauntering down the street, bored, contemptuous of life, mocking the stupidity of adults who would so carelessly leave a time-honored vestige of autumn unsecured near their front door while the likes of them prowled the streets, wreaking havoc with the indifference of a boulder loosed from a steep mountain slope.
Of course I hadn’t even considered what I would say or do if I found them. Assuming my clever, time-honed adult faculties would come to my rescue, I rolled down the window and leaned out my head.
“Um… out smashing pumpkins tonight, eh?” I declared.
The three exchanged a bored glance.
“No,” said the smarmy blond ringleader, his name no doubt Dakota, Cody, or GMC Yukon.
“That’s funny,” I said, “because three kids in sweatshirts like yours just smashed our pumpkin.”
“It wasn’t us,” mewed Beavis, stretching the pouch pocket on the front of his hoodie down to his knees.
“Yeah. It was some kids on bikes,” Butthead grunted.
I wasn’t prepared for a bald faced lie; certainly not three bald faced lies.
At the risk of sounding like my father, things were different when I was a kid. We feared authority. Which isn’t to say we didn’t engage in mischief aplenty. But out of our healthy respect for and fear of adults, we conducted said mischief in accordance with time honored principles.
For example, when I left a burning sack of dog poop on a neighbor’s front stoop and rang the doorbell, I did it late at night then ran like a sissy – for miles, so that even a pack of bloodhounds couldn’t trace me. In that way, when said neighbor saw me at the annual neighborhood picnic, he could remain happily convinced I was the fine upstanding young man he always fancied me to be. We were polite vandals; not like the kids today.
Needless to say, I was done; spent of my verbal ammunition.
Unlike the movies, no brilliant, Dirty Harry-like lines popped into my head. And the more physical options such as beating them senseless or capturing and returning them to my house to apologize to my daughters seemed ill advised, carrying at minimum a fine and possible jail time – for me. These were just innocent children, after all.
“Well you’d better hope not,” I stuttered. “I called the police.”
Cody yawned. “Are we done here?”
It seemed we were. To save face, I drove off in search of the phantom kids on bikes, three smug sneers mocking me from my rearview mirror.
A couple evenings later, as my wife and I sat on our patio enjoying a glass of wine, the same punks left a pile of dog excrement on my front stoop. I guess I showed them.
