Teen may be the ugliest of four letter words. We have teen angst, teen idols, teenie boppers, teen sensations, teen pregnancy and yes, even teenagers; all of which are stupid in one way or another. I know what you are thinking: “But you were a teenager once too.” Yes I was and I hated every minute of it. Let me take you on my journey of disgust for all things teen.
When I was in the third grade, I was walking past the high school on my way home from my elementary school. Ahead, I saw a bunch of the aforementioned teenagers loitering in front of the school. The previous day had brought a very rare snow storm to our Texas town and there was still some snow lingering around. As I got directly perpendicular to the wall where the teens were goofing off I could hear their idiotic laughter get suddenly silent. I felt like I should start running but I didn’t, I just kept my previous pace. Out of a flash my head was jerked to one side and I stumbled off the sidewalk. As I regained my composure I once again heard the stupid laughter from the group. I looked over and one of these fine upstanding youths was standing as though he had just thrown something at me and he was laughing with the others in a hilarious uproar behind him. He had thrown the most tightly packed, gigantic ice ball I had ever come across at my head. Surely he could have used his talent for accuracy in a better way such as baseball or football, but he felt the desire to harm young children. I reached up and felt my ear and when I brought my hand back I saw blood. I wanted so badly to pull a Ralphie on the guy, but he was a teenager and I was a little third grader. So I ran home. Thus began my dislike for teenagers.
When I myself became a teenager I would often find myself being looked at by adults as though I was in cahoots with the rest of the teens in the world. I wanted to say to them, “It’s not me. I am not the one who behaves stupidly.” I never took an opportunity to say that and I regret it. One day when I was 15, I was playing dunk ball on the old elementary school playground with my brother and a friend. We got thirsty and had a couple of quarters that we could use on a water bottle refill station just a few yards down the road. We went and got some water out of the dispenser and as our first gallon purchase was running out a woman pulled up in her car, with her young daughter inside. We put in one more quarter for more water and I noticed the woman get her water bottle out and walk towards another filling station. She then suddenly took the bottle back to her car though and drove away towards an adjacent 7/11. We walked back to the basketball courts and continued playing ball. A few minutes later a police car pulled up near the court and an officer got out while yelling at us to come over to him. He was very angry and asked us why we had harassed a woman and her daughter. We were totally perplexed as we had done no such thing. He told us that a woman had just called from 7/11 saying that three teenagers harassed her and her daughter at the water station. She claimed that we had threatened to do some horrible things to her and her daughter and that we threw a basketball at her. We explained repeatedly to the officer that we were just getting a drink and cooling off and that we had absolutely no interaction with anyone else. It took 10 to 15 minutes to convince the policeman that our side of the story was correct and the woman had completely lied. Luckily he believed us and let us go on our way. If it was an out-of-the-ordinary occurrence for teenagers to harass people we might have had an easier time convincing the officer of the truth.
There are a whole host of other instances similar to these that have led me to dislike teens even when I was one.