On Teen

There is a teen who lives across the street from us. We are very interested in observing her and have had many opportunities to do so. She is so familiar to me. So easily can I call up those welters of unmanageable emotions. So clearly can I remember how it felt to be completely unaware that other human beings exist and have thoughts and feelings. The mingled shame, longing, and regret I felt about my parents, about wanting to be a child again and crawl into their laps but also wanting them to leave me the fuck alone and never associate with me in public.

This teen is a jock. She plays soccer. Every single time I have seen her, she is either going to or coming home from soccer practice or a soccer game. She is ponytailed, knee-padded, cleats-attired, and full of rage. She is one of the maddest teens I have ever known. Her fury is towering and ceaseless.

I first became aware of her when we first moved into this house, and after a couple of weeks it slowly dawned on me that I had NEVER heard her speak in anything but a high-pitched, aggrieved whine. “Who is this amazing creature,” I asked myself, and began looking out the window whenever she appeared.

“Honey can you shut the door–”
“I TRIED TO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“Honey please don’t kick the ball against the window, you’ll break it”
“I WASN’T!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GOD!”

This teen expresses herself solely through near-tears yelling and through kicking a soccer ball. It is so wonderful. I’ve never seen anything like it. At her age I expressed myself through screaming, crying, and writing in my journal; physicality never entered into it. But this girl, her teen feelings come out through her feet and knees, in the form of whaling on this soccer ball as though her life depends upon it!!

One evening we sat on our front stoop drinking margaritas, and watched the family drama play out for about an hour. First came the teen. At least once a day, she flings open the screen door, crashes out onto the porch, and starts furiously kicking the soccer ball against the porch wall and the wall of the house. It looks crazy, unhinged. KICK!KICK!KICK! Very fast, very hard. She does not appear to be working on technique. It appears to be purely an expression of emotion. So, she began doing this. Then her little brother came out on the porch holding a plate of food and said something to her. “SHUT UP!” she shrieked. He went back inside. KICK!KICK!KICK! Her mom came out. “Honey please don’t kick the ball against the house.” “I WASN’T!” she cried, as though she could not believe her mother would so unjustly accuse her; will her trials on this earth never cease? Her mom went back in. She kept kicking the ball. Then she abruptly stopped and flung the door back open and stormed back inside. The ball bounced mournfully a few times before rolling to a stop against the porch wall. Then the little brother came back out and stood looking down at the ball for a few moments. Then he very deliberately kicked it over the porch wall and into the neighbor’s fenced yard. He stood looking at it for awhile, then walked back into the house.

We roared with laughter. Now we tell all our house guests about it, and then it’s very gratifying when the houseguest in question then gets to see the teen in action. We told Jae about it and then the next day Jae saw the full spectrum–the soccer ball, the yelling.

Imagine being the parents of a mad teen. You would have to become a Buddhist monk to even be able to sleep at night.

Another time the whole family was out on the porch, just hanging out, and the teen was furiously kicking the ball in the yard. Then she stood up, carefully aligned herself, and then kicked the ball as hard as she could. It went all the way over the entire house and (presumably) into the backyard. The whole family was quiet for a moment. Then the mom said in a low, angry voice: “WHAT DID I JUST SAY.” Clearly this has been a running issue, the kicking of the ball over the house.

Another time the family walked by our house–the teen dribbling her soccer ball–and I heard the mom say: “I am not going to spend the summer being disrespected by the sound of your voice.” Which I thought was a tough-ass thing to say, also reasonable.

I wouldn’t be a teen again for all the money in Mitt Romney’s couch. The only way I’d be a teen again would be if God told me it would solve global warming or something. NO THANK YOU.

One time as a teen I was being such a straight-up bitch that my mom sprayed me with the garden hose while I screamed in shock. My nice mother! Imagine how far she had been pushed, to make her do that.

It is not easy, to be a teen. We must remember.

My students are basically teens. It helps to remember this when you feel baffled or personally insulted by their weird behavior. They are negotiating so many immense washes of confusing emotions. They are full of self-hatred and self-consciousness. They are just beginning to comprehend the utter pointlessness of their existence and their inability to effect change on anything but the most laughably local level. They truly did not ask to be born. They are experimenting with drugs. They are pretending to have serious monogamous relationships when they don’t actually know what they’re doing yet. They have extremely poorly-thought-out, super conservative beliefs (whether left or right doesn’t matter) that they advocate for in the most passionate of language. They tell weird lies. They don’t take care of their bodies–why should they?

Bless their hearts, the teens of this world. I love them all. I could never teach children; give me a teen, all rage and knowing everything and knowing nothing. A microcosm of life on earth