with apologies to penguins.

Yesterday's post really got me thinking about how horrible teenagers are. And yes—thank you very much—I'm fully aware that dismissing teenagers as idiotic and inexplicable is usually recognized as a tell-tale symptom of being old and out-of-touch—but I have to admit that I've always hated teenagers (in a theoretical sense), even when I was one. There's just something too bitter in the irony that when we think we know everything, we actually know nothing at all—except maybe how to huff Wite-Out® or dress in ways that will shame us photographically for decades to come. 

Once when I was within hearing distance of two factory-assembled teenage girls, I noticed how many times they seasoned their Socratic dialogue with the word 'like.' If 'like' were salt, they'd both have hypertension by now. Admittedly, very few of us—even as wise and wizened adults—are immune to adding place-fillers to our conversations, like 'you know,' 'uh,' and 'I'm dead inside,' but I'd like to think I don't have to riddle a simple declarative sentence with a machine gun barrage of 'likes.' What amazed me the most from the conversation, however, was how many words these girls strung together to say so little. They could talk for a full ten minutes and the net communication was that Haiyllee was planning on going to Jaaysonn's party next Friday.

I know this sounds harsh, but I think teenagers could benefit from a war to serve in or a famine to survive by eating diseased horse meat. Nowadays they're too busy with handjobs and blowjobs when they should be eking out a meager existence with the hazardous jobs that made the youth of the nineteenth century so mature, responsible, and sickly—like coal mining, precision factory work, and locating land mines. I can't imagine what depth of experience this generation is missing out on by never having had a best friend die from tuberculosis or a cancerous, mutated mother who has to live under a vapor barrier from inhaling too much silica dust. What happened to the good old days?

I had an idea (or a fantasy, rather) that when American citizens turn twelve they could be shipped to Antarctica where they would have to use their wits and physical wherewithal to survive until they were twenty-two, at which point they would be allowed to return. I know. It's an awful idea, isn't it? I would never want to do that to those poor penguins. And can you imagine how they'd trash the whole continent down there? The place would be littered with One Direction posters, bongs made out of ice, and makeshift cum rags. The upside of the fantasy is that few teenagers would survive this decade-long endurance test. (Actually none would—because Antarctica lacks the resources for a human being to survive in the wild for long periods of time.) But if one of them did somehow manage to survive, imagine what strength of character he or she would have! I'm sorry, but there's just no iPhone app for that kind of thing...