Friday, March 12, 2004
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Friday, March 12, 2004 |
| My teenager suffers from brushaphobia By Rick Ryckeley Looking back at my youth through the sharply focused eyes of a grown-up, I have determined two things. The first: the further I get away from teen years, the less trouble I remember being to my parents. In fact, if you ask me in a couple of years, I’ll tell you I was a saint as a teenager and never did anything bad. The second: kids nowadays do things we wouldn’t even dream of doing when we were kids. For example, the Boy has a problem. Stop laughing; it’s not me. The Boy, I’m afraid, has developed a brush allergy. Yes, like most teenagers he has become brushaphobic. No matter how many times he’s told to fix his hair, all he does is put a hat on. In the house, no less! When I scowl at him, he just looks at me and says, “What? It’s fixed.” Am I the only parent that has a teenager walking around inside the house with a hat on? I know it’s a little thing, and the world won’t come to an end if he does, but it really bugs me. If my Dad saw me wearing a hat on my head while in his house, he’d knock it off. I’d pick up my hat from one side of the room and my head from the other. There’re a few other things that bug me about the youngsters today. What ever happened to that “Yes sir, no sir, yes ma’am, no ma’am” stuff? My dad wasn’t in the military, but back in the day, that was the proper way to address your elders. Things seem to have changed a bit in the last 30 years. The Boy? He’s a grunter. When he’s told to do something, if we’re lucky, he grunts. “Did you clean your room?” He grunts. “All your homework done yet?” He grunts. “Did you hear what time to be in tonight?” Another grunt. “Will you take your hat off inside my house?” A grunt, a sigh, and an eye roll. Just who came up with the eye-rolling thing? Read on, dear reader. There’s nothing worse than wearing a hat in the house, except the eye-rolling thing. If there’s one thing that really gets my goat, it’s the eye roll. (Okay, I really don’t know what “gets my goat” means. I just remember Dad saying it when he got really irritated with one of us. For some reason, I heard it all the time.) I’ll be in the middle of talking to The Boy - and he rolls his eyes! If I tell him to stop, he lets out a “Daaaaad!” Back in the day if I grunted and rolled my eyes to my Dad when he was talking, I’d pick up my eyes from the floor and my head would still be rolling around for a week. From what I have observed, the sighing, eye-rolling thing has been perfected, if not invented, by teenage girls. When they add the fine art of the one-handed hair-flipping head tilt, you’re in for a real treat. Dads, if you’re the father of a whining, one-handed hair-flipping head-tilting teenage girl, save yourself a whole lot of eye-rolling and just give her whatever she wants. Some advice for new parents of teenagers: Get used to the hat on in the house thing. Get used to the sighing thing. Get use to the eye-rolling thing, especially if you have a teenage girl. (Refer to paragraph above.) Don’t worry about asking teenage boys to bring their dirty laundry to the laundry room everyday. They won’t. When they run out of clean clothes, that’s when they’ll bring it all to you. The most important bit of advice is not to repeat things. Just buy a small, hand-held tape recorder. Whenever you tell your teenager something, and 10 minutes later they swear you never said it, just play them the tape, but be prepared for a sigh and the eye roll thing. Last night I was at the fire department, and The Boy was home with The Wife. She had fixed one of her mouth-watering meals and called him down for dinner. Side note: Do you only see your teenagers when they emerge from their room for dinner or when they ask you for money? Same here. (Funny, the Boy doesn’t grunt when asking for money. He articulates quite clearly.) The Boy came lumbering down the steps and plopped down in the expensive wood chair. Teenagers plop now; they don’t sit. We, of course, the angels that we were, never plopped. The Wife shot him her best teacher look and in a stern voice inquired, “You don’t really believe you’re going to eat at my table with a hat on, do you!?” The Boy immediately took off the hat and grunted. Teacher looks. They sure are effective on teenagers. Maybe I should get her to ask him to fix his hair. [Rick Ryckeley is employed by the Fayette County Department of Fire and Emergency Services. He can be reached at saferick@bellsouth.net.] |