Upon marrying my second wife, I found myself in charge of - at one time - four teenagers, three boys and one of the other ones. As I write this, one has turned 21, and I can't legitimately claim him as a teenager any longer. I can, however, claim expertise in the area of not only raising teenagers, but surviving the ordeal. Doesn't it seem backwards to say it like that? Shouldn't I have said "not only surviving the, but successfully raising them and sending them to adulthood?" Yeah, whatever.
Ever try to live with a teenager, much less two, three, or four of them? Well, the 'raising' part is a cakewalk. They raise themselves. In fact, the growing up part seems to never end. You say goodnight to one about 10:30pm when you're too exhausted to outlast him, and he greets you about 12:15pm the next day, 6 inches taller and eating the entire box of Frosted Flakes right out of the box with a spoon. "Hey, pop, I need new shoes," suffices for the cute "g'morning" you used to hear before the evilness of puberty latched on to him and drew him down into a life of endless showers and money leeching.
Teenagehood is relentless. Typical days for parents of teenagers consist of waking up before them, starving for the omellette you were dreaming about, then finding the refrigerator cleaned out sometime after you went to bed. The sink is full of a conglomeration of dirty skillets, spatulas, napkins, half-eaten yogurt cups, and a sock. Of course there's only one egg left, so you make your toast and drink it with a nice cup of coffee. Coffee is an adult luxury that you can rely on, since it involves several steps and takes longer than a microsecond to make, both qualities that teenagers will never possess. If you don't drink coffee, then you learn to love ice water, because every other beverage in the fridge was also inhaled after you fell asleep.
You head off to work, and then wait unconsciously on the job for your cell phone to ring. You answer it expectantly and are greeted with, "Hey, dad, are you gonna go grocery shopping tonight cuz we're out of milk? Oh, and could you pick up some more of those frozen pizzas cuz the guys are comin over tonight? Oh, yeah, and could you spot me some gas money; I'm about on E." Good morning to you, too. Yes, my day is fine, thanks for asking. Of course you can have a friend over later. Why, thanks so much for doing those extra chores for the gas money. So after a hard day at work, you stop by the store on the way home, spending the last of your unspent money on frozen food that probably won't make it out of the grocery bag before it's inhaled.
Evenings are a flurry of cooking, straightening up, throwing laundry in some sort of machine that always seems to break or leak or both, pulling laundry out of a dryer, sorting through piles of clothes that you had folded and sorted yesterday, but have since been demolished and reorganized somehow on the floor or the top of the dryer, and driving teenagers places.
Let's talk about the driving. It NEVER ends. The amount of driving you do with teenagers is unfathomable. It requires its own scientific formula to appropriately demonstrate the disproportionate amount of driving to the hours in an evening. In fact, I believe wholeheartedly that the amount of driving a parent of one teenager does is scientifically impossible. I think the time spent driving a teenager around is actually GREATER than the amount of actual time present that evening. Add extra teenagers and the issue becomes a conundrum wrapped in an enigma sheathed in a perplexity. How is it possible? I'd love some Theoretical Physics major to tackle that one, please.
Ultimately there's the money lending. I 'use' lending loosely. Lending is something libraries do, with the expectation they'll be getting their books back. What parents of teenagers do is more akin to what Jesse James did to banks and trains. "Hey dad, how's about spotting me a Hamilton?" really translates to: "If you don't loan me twenty dollars, I'll park in front of your spot in the garage so you can't get out, invite Smelly Melly over for dinner every night this week, grow my hair over my eyes, turn my amp up two numbers when I'm 'practicing', and mess with the internet so only those of us under 25 will know how to get online." Here, take the twenty and leave everything else alone, for God's sake!
I know all this sounds like a lot of gloom and doom. But please remember that all of that just concerns raising teenagers. That stuff happens all over the country, every day of the year. Poor parents are succumbing to the onslaught of teenage-dom even as I write! So what's the answer? How do you SURVIVE teenagehood?
Easy. The answer is FOOD MAINTENANCE. Yes, you'll have to spend most of your second mortgage on frozen and carbonated food and drink items. That's been clearly delineated earlier. But I'm not talking about food maintenance for your teenagers. The secret to surviving life with your teenagers is taking control of your own food maintenance. I have discovered the secret, the Fountain of Eternal Parental Happiness. YOU MUST CHOOSE FOODS TO EAT THAT YOU AND ONLY YOU COULD EVER POSSIBLY ENJOY! Stop buying Frosted Flakes and expecting to ever eat a bowl of them. Think 'BRAN'. Teenagers are allergic to it; and with enough sugar (that you'll have to hide in your sock drawer) even bran is edible. I hope you've given up your youthful desires for pizzas containing typical pizza toppings like pepperoni, sausage, and extra cheese. Those delicacies will never make it past the gluttonous, ever-chomping jowels of your 14 year old. Choose instead those toppings despised by anyone under middle age, or perhaps vegans: artichokes, capers, leeks, and goat cheese. With enough practice and Beano, you'll learn to love those toppings that you once thought inedible. And finally, forget about ever making it to the fridge and finding a Hunt's Snack Pack of chocolate pudding for yourself. Tapioca is the key! Those little pearls of adult goodness send teenagers running for the Quick Trip.
So, hold your heads high, parents of teenagers. The secret is revealed: Dogs love it! They'll eat anything. And so can you.
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