Me: “I refuse to attend Support Group.”Mom: “One of the symptoms of depression is disinterest in activities.”Me: “Please just let me watch America’s Next Top Model. It’s an activity.”Mom: “Television is a passivity.”Me: “Ugh, Mom, please.”Mom: “Hazel, you’re a teenager. You’re not a little kid anymore. You need to make friends, get out of the house, and live your life.”Me: “If you want me to be a teenager, don’t send me to Support Group. Buy me a fake ID so I can go to clubs, drink vodka, and take pot.”Mom: “You don’t take pot, for starters.”Me: “See, that’s the kind of thing I’d know if you got me a fake ID.”Mom: “You’re going to Support Group.”Me: “UGGGGGGGGGGGGG.”Mom: “Hazel, you deserve a life.
Stop trying to be less of who you are. Let this time in your life cut you open and drain all of the things that are holding you back.
I think being a teenager is such a compelling time period in your life--it gives you some of your worst scars and some of your most exhilarating moments. It's a fascinating place; old enough to feel truly adult, old enough to make decisions that affect the rest of your life, old enough to fall in love, yet, at the same time too young (in most cases) to be free to make a lot of those decisions without someone else's approval.
I can do this… I can start over. I can save my own life and I’m never going to be alone as long as I have stars to wish on and people to still love.
Children are no longer being parented, but are raised. Thats why they don't have morals, ethics,humanity and manners, because their parents neglected them. We now live in a society that doesnt care about right or wrong.
I could watch him do this until morning — never asking questions and never interrupting his work. I worship quietly — his intense focus and attention to detail and then, out of no where, I realize the inconvenient, inappropriate truth: ‘I love this man… and it has swallowed me.
Your personal truth is your gift to the world.
The typical atheist rebels against God as a teenager rebels against his parents. When his own desires or standards are not fulfilled in the way that he sees fit, he, in revolt, storms out of the house in denial of the Word of God and in scrutiny of a great deal of those who stand by the Word of God. The epithet 'Heavenly Father' is a grand reflection, a relation to that of human nature.
Justin, honey, you were my very first kiss. My very first hand to hold. But you were nothing more than an average guy. And I don't say that to be mean- I don't. There was just something about you that made me need to be your girlfriend to this day I don't know exactly what that was. But it was there.. and it was amazingly strong. -Thirteen Reasons Why
Don’t worry if people think you’re crazy. You are crazy. You have that kind of intoxicating insanity that lets other people dream outside of the lines and become who they’re destined to be.
I met a boy whose eyes showed me that the past, present and future were all the same thing.
For so many years, I couldn’t understand why every time I thought that someone finally loved me, like… for real, they would eventually turn to vapor. Every person whom I’ve ever loved is trapped inside of my chest. I’ve breathed all of them in so deeply that I’ve nearly choked and died on every soul that I’ve ever given myself to.
I want to be the best version of myself for anyone who is going to someday walk into my life and need someone to love them beyond reason.
Let this time in your life cut you open and drain all of the things that are holding you back. I’m going to help you forgive the things that you won’t let yourself forget.
I look out into the water and up deep into the stars. I beg the sparkling lanterns of light to cure me of myself — my past and the kaleidoscope of mistakes, failures and wrong turns that have stacked unbearable regret upon my shoulders.
Does our purpose on Earth directly link to the people whom we end up meeting? Are our relationships and experiences actually the required dots that connect and then lead us to our ultimate destinies?
I fantasize the night sky to be like a cosmic blue print of my life as I close my eyes and unbutton my heart…. just in case anyone up there is listening.
I’ve grown up defined by this desperate, undeniable, ‘can’t breathe’ kind of space inside of myself and I’m afraid that the diagnosis is fatal.
Something, somewhere, knows what’s best for me and promises to keep sending me people and experiences to light my way as long as I live in gratitude and keep paying attention to the signs.
I’ve always seen this in you, ever since you were a little girl — this hunger to love other people into their highest selves and it’s what has made me irreversibly and just so forever in love with you.
Please… Whoever you are, whatever you are… I believe in you even though I don’t completely understand you. I feel you around me even though I can’t exactly describe what I’m feeling. Sometimes things happen to me and I know that you’re there and I’m humbled by the lack of coincidence that exists in the world. Whatever you want from me, it’s yours — just please help me. You know how I get when I lose control, and I find myself constantly being pulled back there these days.
I feel a resurgence of my 6-year-old self… that little warrior, goddess of a girl reminding me of who I was when I was little, before the world got its hands on me.
I know that this process of ‘me changing my life’ doesn’t just end once I set fire to this list of things I hate about myself. Tonight isn’t as much of a new beginning as it is a violent end and I know the real work hasn’t even started yet.
I’m going to follow this invisible red thread until I find myself again… until I finally figure out… who I’m meant to be.
If ever I was running, it was towards you.
I love him in ways that I can’t explain to other people. They don’t understand… it’s not their fault.
I really believe that there is an invisible red thread tied between him and me, and that it has stretched and tangled for years — across oceans and lifetimes. I know that it won’t break because our souls are tied.
Everything hurts right now and nothing is helping because as the pain is getting worse — so is the love.
I just want your voice aimed at me again. I want to absorb the direction of your eyes…
I want you to trust yourself, baby. Love is all that matters and you’ve always known that. You’ve known, since you were a very little girl, what your life is meant to be about…
I know that your soul is on life support and that you feel lost and like you’re completely spinning out of control, but you’re finding yourself — here, tonight… even in this darkness.
Life is a process during which one initially gets less and less dependent, independent, and then more and more dependent.
It’s easier for me to make sense of it that way than it is for me to face the other way—reality. And yet, those evil spirits that were unleashed—be they fake entities from a stupid carnival ride, or cruel malevolencies from dark spiritual chasms of our universe—have stayed with me all these years
Listen, we’ll come visit you. Okay? I’ll dress up as William Shakespeare, Lucent as Emily Dickinson, and beautiful ‘Ray’ as someone dashing and manly like Jules Verne or Ernest Hemingway...and we’ll write on your white-room walls. We’ll write you out of your supposed insanity. I love you, Micky Affias.-James (from "Descendants of the Eminent")
...Listen to your own thoughts and feelings very carefully, be aware of your observations, and learn to value them. When you're a teenager—and even when you're older—lots of people will try to tell you what to think and feel. Try to stand still inside all of that and hear your own voice. It's yours and only yours, it's unique and worth of your attention, and if you cultivate it properly, it might just make you a writer.
Tie me up, please..." Chantal said. They looked above at some vines and roots hanging down from the grassy area above the depression in the canal they were standing in. She was in his hands—he had to comply.A little bit of kink was one of the most delicious of erotic pleasures. Catholic school girls were often the horniest—Brett could hardly contain his elation.
Through most of human history, our ancestors had children shortly after puberty, just as the members of all nonhuman species do to this day. Whether we like the idea or not, our young ancestors must have been capable of providing for their offspring, defending their families from predators, cooperating with others, and in most other respects functioning fully as adults. If they couldn't function as adults, their young could not have survived, which would have meant the swift demise of the human race. The fact that we're still here suggests that most young people are probably far more capable than we think they are. Somewhere along the line, we lost sight of – and buried – the potential of our teens.
It is a healthy approach not to expect persons to turn out precisely how you would have wished.
[One way] researchers sometimes evaluate people's judgments is to compare those judgments with those of more mature or experienced individuals. This method has its limitations too, because mature or experienced individuals are sometimes so set in their ways that they can't properly evaluate new or unique conditions or adopt new approaches to solving problems.
If you say, ‘Now I look like an old man’, you will start to look like an old man. If you say, ‘No, I look like a young man now’, you will start to look like a young man. What you project is what you will see. Soul is the form of projection and if false projections are done, the worldly life is created! If you come to a state free of false belief (wrong projection), You will be in the state of the ‘Real form of the Self’ (mood swaroop).
The familiar (if loud) churn of the engine made it hard to talk, especially with the windows open (the air-conditioning didn’t work), but the day was warm and they blasted the music and sang along. Nessa loved singing at full volume. She couldn’t carry a tune, but with Bree it didn’t matter.
That was the funny thing. What happened to John would pass for his classmates, but for John it was a long challenging road ahead of him. Who knew where he would be sent, maybe a juvenile detention center? He might keep in touch with a few friends if his parents let him, but he would never return to Wakefield High. His peers had no clue the journey ahead of him, that his life was changed forever. And they had no idea what lay ahead for Lilly. No one knew she had been given a task by the Archangels to fight a war against pure evil. They had no idea that Lilly would spend most of her free time not training for a marathon, but training to kill demons. John and Lilly were not all too different.
The average adult hates being treated like a child, unless it suits them.
She was a wonderful teenage girl who had the miraculous power to cure herself from any wound, either physical or mental. With her own salty tears, she would cleanse her raw wounds. And her breaths were given, as though not to breathe but, rather, to fan her sores.
It is back to basics here,’ Jason said. ‘What women seek to find in a man is dictated by evolution and the role of the man as a hunter gatherer. Women want a bad boy who will treat them well but not so well that they will have nothing to bitch about to their female friends. Bitching about the male of the species is how females bond with each other…another one of evolutions little jokes.
You know, small children take it as a matter of course that things will change every day and grown-ups understand that things change sooner or later and their job is to keep them from changing as long as possible. It’s only kids in high school who are convinced they’re never going to change. There’s always going to be a pep rally and there’s always going to be a spectator bus, somewhere out there in their future.
It's okay to look different, Lilith. Beauty is only a matter of opinion. If you believe you are beautiful, then that's all that matters. These are really tough years you're approaching now. Your decisions now as a teenager can change your entire life. Just make sure you talk to me or comeone if you're ever feeling like life is too much to handle. And never let anyone convince you that you're not worthy, only to take advantage of you.
It's okay to look different, Lilith. Beauty is only a matter of opinion. If you believe you are beautiful, then that's all that matters. These are really tough years you're approaching now. Your decisions now as a teenager can change your entire life. Just make sure you talk to me or someone if you're ever feeling like life is too much to handle. And never let anyone convince you that you're not worthy, only to take advantage of you.
Some are young people who don't know who they are, what they can be or even want to be. They are afraid, but they don't know of what. They are angry, but they don't know at whom. They are rejected and they don't know why. All they want is to be somebody.
I bet if you look at the average teenager and the average adult, the average teenager has read more books in the last year than the average adult. Now of course the adult would be all like, 'I'm busy, I got a job, I got stuff to do.' WHATEVER! READ! I mean, you're watching CSI: Miami. Why would you be watching CSI: Miami, when you could be READING CSI: Miami, the novelization?
Being willing to feel my pain isn't another strategy I can use to avoid my pain. It is genuinely accepting that sometimes stuff really sucks. Sometimes life can really hurt. Sometimes this world isn't what I signed up for. Sometimes I still feel like I would do anything not to have these feelings and these thoughts... Willingness to allow suffering to be there is hard. Damn hard. And often frightening too. And the only thing harder is not being willing to allow suffering to be there.
Rock'n'roll is a teenage sport, meant to be played by teenagers of all ages--they could be 15, 25 or 35. It all boils down to whether they've got the love in their hearts, that beautiful teenage spirit... -Calvin Johnson
When a child reaches adolescence, there is very apt to be a conflict between parents and child, since the latter considers himself to be by now quite capable of managing his own affairs, while the former are filled with parental solicitude, which is often a disguise for love of power. Parents consider, usually, that the various moral problems which arise in adolescence are peculiarly their province. The opinions they express, however, are so dogmatic that the young seldom confide in them, and usually go their own way in secret.
When you blame others, what you are really saying is what is inside of you can’t be fixed, so you have no control of your own happiness. Therefore, you have made the conscience choice to give focus and fuel to a bad situation that will take you nowhere and give you nothing, but ignorance and pain.
when she removed my hand from her chest for the one hundred thousandth time. Attack and defense, invasion and repulsion... it was as if breasts were little pieces of property that had been unlawfully annexed by the opposite sex - they were rightfully ours and we wanted them back.
What was in it for me? I wasn't asking for any sort of reciprocation, after all. Why didn't she want her erogenous zones stimulated? I have no idea. All I know is that you could, if you wanted to, find the answers to all sorts of difficult questions buried in that terrible war-torn interregnum between the first pubic hair and the first soiled Trojan.
So much has been done to my body, and still, somehow, not enough.
I tried to push my body through his and completely disappear.
Shall I tell her? Shall I be a kind and merciful narrator and take our girl aside? Shall I touch her new, red heart and make her understand that she is no longer one of the tribe of heartless children, nor even the owner of the wild and infant heart of thirteen-year-old girls and boys? Oh, September! Hearts, once you have them locked up in your chest, are a fantastic heap of tender and terrible wonders - but they must be trained. Beatrice could have told her all about it. A heart can learn ever so many tricks, and what sort of beast it becomes depends greatly upon whether it has been taught to sit up or to lie down, to speak or to beg, to roll over or to sound alarm, to guard or to attack, to find or to stay. But the trick most folk are so awfully fond of learning, the absolute second they've got hold of a heart, is to pretend they don't have one at all. It is the very first danger of the hearted. Shall I give fair warning, as neither you nor I was given?
The confusion boys experience about their identity is heightened during adolescence. In many ways the fact that today's boy often has a wider range of emotional expression in early childhood, but if forced to suppress emotional awareness later on makes adolescence all the more stressful for boys. Tragically, were it not for the extreme violence that has erupted among teenage boys throughout our nation, the emotional life of boys would still be ignored. Although therapists tell us that mass media images of male violence and domination teach boys that violence is alluring and satisfying, when individual boys are violent, especially when they murder randomly, pundits tend to behave as though it were a mystery why boys are so violent.
If you find the dividing line between fairy tales and reality, let me know. In my mind, the two run together, even though the intersections aren't always obvious. The girl sitting quietly in class or waiting for the bus or roaming the mall doesn't want anyone to know, or doesn't know how to tell anyone, that she is locked in a tower. Maybe she's a prisoner of a story she's heard all her life- that fairest means best, or that bruises prove she is worthy of love.
I was nineteen years five months old when I fell in love for the first time. This seemed to me a profound, advanced age; never can we anticipate being older than we are, or wiser; if we're exhausted, it's impossible to anticipate being strong; as, in the grip of a dream, we rarely understand that we're dreaming, and will escape by the simplest of methods, opening our eyes.
I write letters to you that you’ll never see.
He looked at me, that first day, like he had just found something he’d lost a thousand years ago.
But I love you and I want you and I need you. Can’t you see that? This world has nothing to offer me if it doesn’t include you.
The Fall will always be yours and mine…
Time' is the most threatening four letter word.
I’m tired of justifying why I love someone. I’m done with the explaining.
That last time you kissed me my heart slid past your teeth down into the center of your chest… trapping us both in a stainless cage.
If I had an .MP3 of your heartbeat… I might actually get some sleep.
I kept waiting for the part where I’d finally know who I was — some flashing, neon moment of relief, but it never came.
In the old days, when travelers would get lost, they would follow the stars and I love that idea. I wish that I could rely on something as simple and magnificent as a star for all of my aching questions.
I ruin everything. I think that a bullet must have passed through my heart when I was very young, causing me to bleed out slowly, over things and people and every white surface that I’d ever come across.
I wish that love could be broken down the way it breaks me down.
I don’t ever want to hurt anyone, but I really wish there was something like a reset button on my life.
He could pour himself into my little paper cup heart and my emptiness would finally have a meaning.
It feels like the world is folding up around me, like origami paper, and I’m trapped inside of its breathless center.
I want to understand the strings that are tied between me and certain other people and if they really can stretch through infinite time and space without ever breaking. Are soul mates real, and is my life ever going to make sense?
I feel like a paper cut just waiting to bleed.
I wish on one of the stars for divine orchestration and save the rest of them for all of the other girls in the world who will feel like I do tonight.
Standing naked on the beach with all of my secrets between my legs, I look out into the water and up deep into the stars. I beg the sparkling lanterns of light to cure me of myself…
Do you know that feeling? When everything you do seems like a struggle. Where you dont wanna leave the house because you know everyone is judging you. Where you cant even ask for directions in fear that they critise you. Where everyone always seems to be picking out your flaws. That feeling where you feel so damn sick for no reason.Do you know that feeling where you look in the mirror and completly hate what you see. When you grab handfuls and handfuls of fat and just want to cut it all off. That feeling when you see other beautiful girls and just wish you looked like them. When you compare yourself to everyone you meet. When you realise why no one ever showed intrest in you. That feeling where you become so self conscious you dont even turn up at school. That feeling when you feel so disappointed in who you are and everything you have become. That feeling when every bite makes you wanna be sick. When hunger is more satifying that food. The feeling of failure when you eat a meal. Do you know that feeling when you cant run as far as your class. Fear knowing that everyone thinks of you as the"Unfit FAT BITCH" That feeling when you just wanna let it all out but you dont wanna look weak. The fear you have in class when you dont understand something but your too afraid to ask for help. The feeling of being to ashamed to stand up for yourself. Do you know the feeling when your deepest fear becomes a reality. Fear that you will NEVER be good enough. When you feel as if you deserve all the pain you give yourself. When you finally understand why everyone hates you. FINALLY realising the harsh truth. Understanding that every cut, every burn, every bruise you have even given yourself, you deserved. In fact you deserved worse. That feeling when you believe you deserve constant and brutal pain. Do you know what it feels like to just want to give up. When you just want all the pain to end but you want it to continue? Or am i just insane
So that's it. That's the big secret. I tried to kill myself on New Year's eve. Just like Sadie did last night. Only she really did it. I don't know all the detatils, just the basics. She took a bunch of pills. I don't know what they were or where she got them. I'd like to think they were Wonder Drug. Then at least she could have gone thinking she was flying.
You haunt my days and dreams.
Most parents try really hard to give their kids the best possible life. They give them the best food and clothes they can afford, take their own kind of take on training kids to be honest and polite. But what they don't realize is no matter how much they try, their kids will get out there. Out to this complicated little world. If they are lucky they will survive, through backstabbers, broken hearts, failures and all the kinds of invisible insane pressures out there. But most kids get lost in them. They will get caught up in all kinds of bubbles. Trouble bubbles. Bubbles that continuously tell them that they are not good enough. Bubbles that get them carried away with what they think is love, give them broken hearts. Bubbles that will blur the rest of the world to them, make them feel like that is it, that they've reached the end. Sometimes, even the really smart kids, make stupid decisions. They lose control. Parents need to realize that the world is getting complicated every second of every day. With new problems, new diseases, new habits. They have to realize the vast probability of their kids being victims of this age, this complicated era. Your kids could be exposed to problems that no kind of therapy can help. Your kids could be brainwashed by themselves to believe in insane theories that drive them crazy. Most kids will go through this stage. The lucky ones will understand. They will grow out of them. The unlucky ones will live in these problems. Grow in them and never move forward. They will cut themselves, overdose on drugs, take up excessive drinking and smoking, for the slightest problems in their lives. You can't blame these kids for not being thankful or satisfied with what they have. Their mentality eludes them from the reality.
Just as teenagers can live in the same house as their parents, yet choose not to live “close” to them in partnership, so we can choose to be children of God, yet live very distant from God in our hearts. On the other hand, we can choose to have the closest partnership with Him, in which we know what He thinks, believes, and acts and what is important to Him. In this place of intimacy, we also discover just how close He wants to be with us.
The only teenagers in town seemed to kill themselves in gruesomely rural ways—I heard about their pickups crashing at two in the morning, the sleepover in the garage camper ending in carbon monoxide poisoning, a dead quarterback. I didn’t know if this was a problem born of country living, the excess of time and boredom and recreational vehicles, or whether it was a California thing, a grain in the light urging risk and stupid cinematic stunts
I don't understand how teens in this generation stress being in a relationship/love more than adults do about their future. She’s testing him to see if he's loyal, he’s testing her to see if she's after money. So, basically it’s a messed up-stressed-testing generation. Love has been blown so far out of proportion I reckon. The stress surrounding the single sentence ‘I love you’ is saddening. Relax!!! You're young! Your teen years are supposed to be fun. You have your whole lives ahead to find the right one. Just sit back, chill and live life the way it comes.
There is the scent too. Wonder follows it; wonder about how a boy can smell like that when he probably has no idea. He smells like the woods in the winter or the rain when it first falls, or maybe it’s just the way he always smells and there is no way to define it.
He was acting like our kiss had broken him, and his reaction was breaking me.
Chasing a man is not winning. The only thing you win is the loss of your dignity. Confidence is knowing your value, instead of expecting a man’s love to provide you with value.
Teen "addiction" to social media is a new extension of typical human engagement. Their use of social media as their primary site of sociality is most often a byproduct of cultural dynamics that have nothing to do with technology, including parental restrictions and highly scheduled lives. Teens turn to, and are obsessed with whichever environment allows them to connect to friends. most teens aren't addicted to social media; if anything, they're addicted to each other.
No matter how many years passed or how much responsibility each assumed, they still managed to bicker like bitchy teenagers on a regular basis. In some way, though, each found it comforting; it reminded them how close they really were: Acquaintances were always on their best behavior, but sisters loved each other enough to say anything.
Lilac curled her upper lip in a dead-eyed sneer, and it made my skin crawl. The girl looked like she might fillet me and have me for a snack later. She made the Dale R. Fielding High School Cheer Squad look like Barney and Friends, and I vowed to give her a wide berth.
When I was a teen, I liked to hang out around popular girls, I thought they had some magic, secrets that only they knew and I wanted to learn it... Though pretty soon I realized... popular girls were just like spam... they promised a lot, but only thing they had and could use were their well-built bodies and ability to apply make-up here and there. Mostly they were deceptive and had no senses... they had no idea about friendship, kindness and beauty as it is. Friendship for them was not something more than poor relations, sort of like in "God Father". Love for them was not something bigger than sex. Kindness for them was to have a kitty or a dog (which was already very rare case)... And beauty for them was... well, you can imagine. Concentrated selfishness
…So, um, you’re from Rochester? Like, New York?” Jersey asked.“Yup, we used to live out there,” Rudger confirmed, nonchalant. “You ever been?”“Naw, the closest I’ve ever been to there would be… well, believe it or not, New Jersey, the place where my parents named me after. It was crowded, polluted and full of crime… I loved it.
It is better to stay single and wait for the one that makes sense then to marry someone that makes absolutely no sense. The moment you settle is when the one person that makes all the sense in the world shows up and Satan sits back and enjoys your spiritual meltdown.
Cyber bullying occurs online daily. Most don't consider their actions or words to be bullying. Here's a few clues that you're a cyber bully.(1) You post information about someone in order to ruin their character.(2) You post threats to someone.(3) You tag someone in vulgar degrading posts.(4) You post any information intended to harm or shame another individual seeking to gain attention.Then, you are a cyber bully and need to get some help.
At their core, Tiger Eyes, Forever..., and Sally J. Freeman are all books about teenage issues, but to an adult reader, the parents' story lines seem to almost overshadow their daughters. I'm bringing an entirely new set of experiences to these novels now, and my reward is a fresh set of story lines that i missed the first time around. I'm sure that in twenty or thirty years I'll read these books again and completely identify with all the grandparent characteristics. That's the wonderful thing about Judy Blume - you can revisit her stories at any stage in life and find a character who strikes a deep chord of recognition. I've been there, I'm in the middle of this, someday that'll be me. The same characters, yet somehow completely different. (Beth Kendrick)
Too many adults wish to 'protect' teenagers when they should be stimulating them to read of life as it is lived.
Some people were simply created with the right genes and the proper social skills, I figured. They ended up at a lunch table with a group of good-looking individuals, like them, who did what all good-looking individuals managed: making the rest of us feel both envious of them and sad for ourselves, intentional or not. They had activities outside of school and followers online—people of social necessity who sat at home on Friday nights and 'liked' popular posts in hopes that they, too, might one day be as attractive and personable.
I think of what it means to be a teenager in America, necessarily pushing boundaries, making expected mistakes. Here there is no margin for error: a mistake, no matter how insignificant, dashes any small hopes to break the cycle of poverty. Here in Kibera the world is relentless and unforgiving.
Now, Mr. Antonio. I understand that there are people who are close to you who want me dead.”“No, mija. They don’t want you dead.”“Then explain this.” I handed him the picture.He chuckled again.“No, they don’t want you dead. That would be too easy. They want revenge.”Cold sweat broke out all over me, but I kept my face calm. I looked at him straight in the eye.“Well, then they are going to be quite disappointed, aren’t they?” I flashed my teeth at him.“Senorita, you might want to warn Senor Smith, you see, my nephew he doesn’t like to share, and if he sees another man after you, he’ll get very, eh, aggressive.” The silver fox looked at me and winked.“Oh, he won’t have to worry.” I said as I was walking out the door. “I doubt he will be alive long enough to know Agent Smith.”Then I slammed the door.
But he was a perfect gentleman, Aunt Amelia. He did not even try to kiss me, though he wanted to. ... You always tell me I must be receptive to broadening experiences. That would have been a broadening experience. And, from what I have observed, a very enjoyable one.
Most insensible, corrupt, cheap, disrespectful young girls run after bad, rude, cocky, nonsensical boys, but a mature, educated, thoughtful, virtuos lady opts for a wise, well breed, experienced, humble, modest gentleman.
I did not see Pirahã teenagers moping, sleeping in late, refusing to accept responsibility for their own actions, or trying out what they considered to be radically new approaches to life. They in fact are highly productive and conformist members of their community in the Pirahã sense of productivity (good fishermen, contributing generally to the security, food needs, and other aspects of the physical survival of the community). One gets no sense of teenage angst, depression, or insecurity among the Pirahã youth. They do not seem to be searching for answers. They have them. And new questions rarely arise.
She had read enough about teenagers to understand you couldn't confront them directly. You couldn't even agree with them. The best strategy was to feign indifference to whatever wrong direction they were headed in, then plop in little facts, like Alka-Seltzers, round innocuous comments, let those sink in, take slow, antidotal effect . . .
That took the view that every misbehavior, every cruelty perpetuated by one kid on another should be let slide in the name of letting kids be kids? (Let them be kids, really let them, and you will end up with a tribe of bulimic eugenicists with huge amounts of credit card debt.)
I begin to learn there are certain things I shouldn't tell her. Like when we meet boys at Dorrian's and I give mine a blow job, or the time I messed around with a boy in the back near the bathrooms. Amy wants to be intimate with boys too, but to her this kind of conduct is slutty. I suppose it is. She, like most girls, including the Jennifers, has a different relationship to boys than I do. She engages in sexual acts with them if she wants, but from my vantage point it looks like she can take them or leave them if they are not just right. She considers whether she actually likes someone before she jumps into bed with him. She isn't wracked with anxiety when there aren't any boys around. And she doesn't need them to live, which is what it feels like for me.
You forget what it was like. You'd swear on your life you never will, but year by year it falls away. How your temperature ran off the mercury, your heart galloped flat-out and never needed to rest, everything was pitched on the edge of shattering glass. How wanting something was like dying of thirst. How your skin was too fine to keep out any of the million things flooding by; every color boiled bright enough to scald you, any second of any day could send you soaring or rip you to bloody shreds.
[In reference to vaginas] Someone saying you're "too loose"? Maybe that person's previous experience has been with women who weren't aroused (which, in the case of young adults, ins't that unusual)...Since many people think that penetration is supposed to be painful at first, a lot of them don't know how to wait for full arousal or make penetration comfortable. So, if a partner is saying you're "too loose," either they're simply experiencing a relaxed, aroused partner for the first time, or they're blowing smoke - either because they think it's the thing to say, or they were expecting to feel trapped in a vise, which is not how penetration should feel for either partner.
In youth, our blood rises and becomes volatile. Desire, worry, and anxiety increase. External circumstances now direct the rise and fall of emotions. Will and intention become constrained by social conventions. Competition, conflict, and scheming are the norm in interactions with people. The approval and disapproval of others become important, and the honest and sincere expression of thoughts and feelings is lost.
It was as if each of them sensed vaguely that the Saturday afternoons of youth are few, and precious, and this feeling which neither of them could have defined or described made every moment of this time together too short, too quickly gone, yet clearer and more sharply edged than any other.
Why do you think, A.J.," they say in unison, "that you find these boys so attractive?" I didn't say that this fiery chemical explosion leaps from somewhere inside me. Parents don't want to hear these things. I shrugged and said nothing. "Maybe you should try sitting on the intensity," Mom suggests, "just until your feelings catch up with reality.""We could chain you to the water heater," Dad offers, "until these little moments pass."You see what I'm up against.
Not for the first time, I wonder what it would feel like that, to be so beautiful that you don't even realize people are watching you, to be so confident that you don't even have to worry about being nervous or feeling self-conscious. I've spent what seems like my whole life trying to pretend I'm that way. What would it be like to have it just come naturally?
America is a young country, young and brash and prone to errors. Like teenagers. For all our inherent goodness, we’ve been cursed with bright, shiny object disease and we don’t want a cure. Not now. Not till we get our little taste, till our kids get theirs.
That was our mistake, I think. One of many mistakes. To believe that boys were acting with a logic that we could someday understand. To believe that their actions had any meaning beyond thoughtless impulse. We were like conspiracy theorists, seeing portent and intention in every detail, wishing desperately that we mattered enough to be the object of planning and speculation. But they were just boys. Silly and young and straightforward; they weren't hiding anything.
So that's how we end up helping Aviva pick out a male escort. Even Darcy is impressed with Eugene's organization; each profile in the boy binder has two pictures, a head shot and a full-body shot, and lists essential information: age, school, height, weight, extracurriculars, hobbies, and dance ability (which ranges from "occasional Dance Dance Revolution participation" to "so good he could back up the Biebs").
Kids who get called the worst names oftentimes find each other. That's how it was with us. Skeezie, Tookis and Addie Carle and Joe Bunch and me. We call ourselves the Gang of Five, but there are only four of us. We do it to keep people on their toes. Make 'em wonder. Or maybe we do it because we figure that there's one more kid out there who's going to need a gang to be part of. A misfit,like us.
Kids who get called the worst names oftentimes find each other. That's how it was with us. Skeezie Tookis and Addie Carle and Joe Bunch and me. We call ourselves the Gang of Five, but there are only four of us. We do it to keep people on their toes. Make 'em wonder. Or maybe we do it because we figure that there's one more kid out there who's going to need a gang to be part of. A misfit,like us.
Anyway, I do not want you thinking that I or Addie or Joe or Skeezie feel sorry for ourselves. We do not. Other people may call us names or think we're weird or whatever, but that does not mean we believe them. We may be misfits, but we're okay. Leastwise, in our own eyes we are, and that's all that matters.
Vomit began to spill out of me like pea soup, splattering the road with champagne and caviar, long island iced teas, of bacon appetizers and croissants, and a perfectly grilled filet mignonette. It had gone down easy, among the kiss ups of the lawyer world, but spewed out nastily and hard, in the company of a cheater.
She had golden blazing sun kissed hair, which hung down in loose, lazy spirals, a heart shaped pouted mouth, which was pink tinged with violet blushing, wide, spangled blue eyes that glimmered sparks to flicker and ember in the vivid intelligence of the moon’s love, and a yielding body, that seem to tangle in loose rhythm as I walked near to her.
teenagers are never joking. when seeking to prove a point, principals and teachers should remember that teenagers are never, ever sarcasic or ironic. if they say "I wish someone would drop a bomb on this school right now," that means they have arranged for a nuclear arsenal to be emptied onto the school and should be immediately suspended and ridiculed. if they say they were merely coming up with a joking excuse to postpone a bio test, reply that all jokes are funny, and that since dropping a bomb on a school is not funny, it is therefore not a joke.
No. Absolutely not. I forbid it. You'll have nightmares." "She was my friend! You must allow me. Why are you so horrid?" As soon as the angry words were out of my mouth, I knew I had gone too far. "Matilda!" Mother rose from her chair. "You are forbidden to pseak to me in that tone! Apologize at once.
Teenagers think they are invincible” with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don’t know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.
We were girls in plaid skirts, loud and obnoxious, driving with the windows down. Capable students, nailing honor roll every year, despite our reputation. We were good kissers, decent dancers, fast with our hands. Desperate and dangerous. A little loose, sure. But desirable. Everyone knew. We were the girls who thought we were nothing if not this: a force, a flame, a million nerve ends electric with appetite and not afraid.
If you have never been saved,you need to stop right where you are and admit to God that you are a sinner in need of salvation. Then ask Him for the gift of eternal life that was made available to you when Christ took your punishment and died for your sins on the
While other girls were blurry, displaying cracks or, at the very least, seams — ripped jeans, coffee-stained T-shirts, hair that poufed up in the rain — Sophia always looked sharp, clear, as if the resolution had been turned up on a microscope and angled straight at her, as if the money had formed a kind of shrink wrap that kept her protected from the normal destruction of the everyday.
I'd always assumed Beth and I would be friends forever. But then in middle of the eighth grade, the Goldbergs went through the World's Nastiest Divorce.Beth went a little nuts.I don't blame her. When her dad got involved with this twenty-one year old dental hygienist, Beth got involved with the junk food aisle at the grocery store. She carried processed snack cakes the way toddlers carry teddy bears. She gained, like, twenty pounds, but I didn't think it was a big deal. I figured she'd get back to her usual weight once the shock wore off.Unfortunately, I wasn't the only person who noticed. May 14 was 'Fun and Fit Day" at Surry Middle School, so the gym was full of booths set up by local health clubs and doctors and dentists and sports leagues, all trying to entice us to not end up as couch potatoes. That part was fine. What wasn't fine was when the whole school sat down to watch the eighth-grade cheerleaders' program on physical fitness.
I learned something important that night. You shouldn’t try to stop everything from happening. Sometimes you’re supposed to feel awkward. Sometimes you’re supposed to be vulnerable in front of people. Sometimes it’s necessary because it’s all part of you getting to the next part of yourself, the next day.
2. Stutter. I can be on the phone for hours with my best friend, but if confronted by a cute guy, wham! I get power outage, my brain is short circuited. You'd be lucky to get anything out of me besides "er...um...uh..." and a ton of blushing.3.Stumble. I trip over my own feet. Yeah it's easy to do that when you're five feet seven and gangly, but I managed to make the dance teacher cry when I was five years old. Or even worse, I knock things over and spill things over and spill food.
It appeared the more religious and older men got, the more insatiable their appetite grew for teenage hymens; a short sighted, selfish, entitled and wicked appetite at that by the kind of men who were disillusioned enough to believe that the world revolved around their poles.
A complex world of intrigues and power play among couples hascombined to deny young people the love and attention they trulydeserve, more and more teenagers are leaving home to peer up withbad influence which eventually lands them in jail for the lucky onesand six feet under for the not so lucky.
My work with teenagers has convinced me that one of the main reasons teenagers are not excited by the gospel is that they do not think they need it. Many parents have successfully raised self-righteous little Pharisees. When they look at themselves, they do not see a sinner in desperate need, so they are not grateful for a Savior. Sadly, the same is true of many of their parents.
The young of the town, preoccupied with their own germinating angst, which each possessed in varying degree (though few were ever fully aware of its existence), felt no particular connection to the land, its people, its structures, or its history. As such, they had no inclination to defend its invisible borders from declared enemies within or without. They desired only escape from this small village, which each viewed as an existential prison built upon the antiquated expectations of their parents and their parents’ parents. And because of their invisible bondage, the young of this town were possessed by a quiet rage. But this rage laid torpid and inert within them, dulled to sleep by the tired repetition of nothing happening over and over and over again, day after day after day.This is the story of one of those young people, and the terrible things that happened to her, and the terrible things she did as a result.
When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.
People say teenagers think they're immortal, and I agree with that. But I think there's a difference between thinking you're immortal and knowing you can survive. Thinking you're immortal leads to arrogance, thinking you deserve the best. Surviving means having the worst thrown at you and being able to continue on despite that. It means striving for what you want most, even when it seems our of your reach, even when everything is working against you.
For though, as we have said, all children are heartless, this is not precisely true of teenagers. Teenage hearts are raw and new, fast and fierce, and they do not know their own strength. Neither do they know reason or restraint, and if you want to know the truth, a goodly number of grown-up hearts never learn it.
Maybe, generations ago, young people rebelled out of some clear motive, but now, we know we’re rebelling. Between teen movies and sex-ed textbooks we’re so ready for our rebellious phase we can’t help but feel it’s safe, contained. It will turn out all right, despite the risk, snug in the shell of rebellion narrative. Rebellion narrative, does that make sense? It was appropriate to do, so we did it.
Why does she always seem to think you drive like we're holding up a bank?"Roswell grinned and rolled his eyes, "Because that's what teenagers do, right? They also carve swastikas into their arms, steal prescription drugs from old people, and freebase cocaine. I need to institute a policy where she stops watching 60 Minutes and pretty much all public service announcements.
Post-adolescent Expert SyndromeThe tendency of young people around the age of eighteen, males especially, to become altruistic experts on everything, a state of mind required by nature to ensure warriors who are willing to die with pleasure on the battlefield. Also the reason why religions recruit kamikaze pilots and suicide bombers almost exclusively from the 18-21 range. "Kyle, I never would have guessed that when you were up in your bedroom playing World of Warcraft all through your teens, you were, in fact, becoming an expert on the films of Jean-Luc Godard.
There's not such thing as handsome princes, she told herself.There's no such thing as happily ever after.She looked up at Park. Into his golden green eyes.You saved my life, she tried to tell him.Not forever, not for good. Probably just temporarily. But you saved my life, and now I'm yours. The me that's right now is yours. Always.
Yes, I was scared, vulnerable, and fragile and lived in books more than real life. Yet there was nothing Mom could do to make things easier for me, just worse by grounding me for life at the slightest hint of truth. Why? Because in spite of what she said she did not trust me or, to put it in her words, I did not know what was good for me.Being a teenager sucks! I might as well have been in prison.
I knew," he murmurs. I can hear him over the music only because he says it right in my ear. "Right after we talked in the mall, I knew.""Knew what?""That you were going to be the first girl to break my heart."My breath catches. I force the smile now. "I haven't broken anything yet, right?""You will. Someday. But everybody breaks everything. For now we're fantastic. It's just, the better we get, the harder I realize the fall will be.
(From the Q&A with the author at the end of the book.)Have any readers ever asked questions that shocked you?I have gotten one question repeatedly from young men. These are guys who liked the book, but they are honestly confused. They ask me why Melinda was so upset about being raped.The first dozen times I heard this, I was horrified. But I heard it over and over again. I realized that many young men are not being taught the impact that sexual assault has on a woman. They are inundated by sexual imagery in the media, and often come to the (incorrect) conclusion that having sex is not a big deal. This, no doubt, is why the number of sexual assaults is so high.I am also shocked by adults who feel that rape is an inappropriate topic to discuss with teenagers. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 44 percent of rape victims are under the age of 18 and 46 percent of those victims are between the ages of 12-15. It makes adults uncomfortable to acknowledge this, but our inability to speak clearly and openly about sexual issues endangers our children. It is immoral not to discuss this with them.
(...) I could "talk fast" -- that's to say, without hesitating, stammering -- most of the time -- but there were categories of words, sentiments, I could never say, they'd have stuck in my throat. The embarrassment of it even whispering-teasing to Legs for instance 'Yeah you're my heart too!' or 'I love you' or 'I would die for you', nobody ever talked that way, mostly there was just my mother and me and we hardly talked at all.
I stop at the tune store, where I'm greeted by Javier and Jules. Half the store is Javier's, half is Jules's—they have entirely different musical tastes, so you have to know going in whether the tune you're looking for is more like Javier or Jules. They have been together for more than twenty years, and today as they offer me cider and argue the blues, I want to ask them how they've done it. To be together with someone for twenty years seems like an eternity to me. I can't seem to manage twenty days. Twenty weeks would be a stretch. How can they stand there behind the counter, spinning songs for each other day in and day out? How can they find things to say—how can they avoid saying things they'll always regret? How do you stay together? I want to ask them, the same way I want to ask my happy parents, the same way I want to go up to old people and ask them 'what is it like to live so long'?
It was bad, but what in high school is not? At the time we're stuck in it, like hostages locked in a Turkish bath, high school seems like the most serious business in the world to just about all of us. It's not until the second or third class reunion that we start realizing how absurd the whole thing was.
Whenever my colleagues and I encounter a boy who acts "normal"—not explosively violent, not oppositional to every word, not obsessed with killing and dying, not focused on sexual objectification—we are overjoyed with his potential. Here is one who has a stronger foundation on which to build, one who will not knock down his every success like a child with a brick castle to see if the adults will keep helping him rebuild.
If the only one who can kill an angel can’t do it, then who can?’ It’s a good question, one that takes me a minute to come up with an answer. ‘Obadiah West can. Him and his freedom fighters. I’m just a teenager.’‘History is filled with teenagers who lead the fight. Joan of Arc. Okita Soji, the samurai. Alexander the Great. They were all teenagers when they began leading their armies. I think we’re back to those times again, kid.
I wish they'd conduct a national poll to find out who feels out of place and who doesn't. Just to get the numbers, you know? To get a feel for how many of us there are. Sometimes at work I get the feeling that it's got to be right up against 100%. I’ll head out to the register to help out during the lunch rush and the new cashier will look so confused and lost, and then I’ll look at the customers she’s supposed to be helping, and they’ll look lost, too, and then when I sneak a glance toward the tables there’ll be all these people staring at their food or at each other with blank looks in their eyes. And I’ll think: Is this just me? Is everybody else actually fine, and I’m just trying to imagine that they’re like me? But I don’t think so. I’ve thought about this a lot, and I’m pretty sure that some ridiculous percentage of the population is walking around feeling like aliens. I think teenagers feel that all the time...
How embarrassing that she ever did something that silly. But, good God, she was seventeen. At that age, we're mostly high-pitched and crazy. All urgent chemicals raging around the blood course. And that's why we do dangerous and embarrassing things, as if simultaneously we're immortal and going to die tomorrow. And that's why we look back on that time so fondly from the dimmer years to come. Remembering the days when we were like Greek gods. Mighty and idiotic.
This was 1991, remember. We didn't have the Internet. So, as teenagers, we lived on the phone. There was no webcamming, no social networking. We dreamt simply of having our own personal phone lines one day, along with uninterrupted hours to talk, and we rarely got that. No matter who we were talking to, no matter how private the conversation, parents picked up the phone accidentally, siblings demanded their time. The introduction of call waiting made all of this even worse, as it allowed aunts and uncles and people you didn't even know to butt in. This is part of why we talked so late in the night, Lindy and I, all of us teens. This is why we looked so pale in our grunge clothes. These night hours were the only times we felt we could tell the truth without danger, the only times we could live separately from our parents while still inside of their homes. There were no cell phones. No private text messages. It was simple one on one conversation and, if it was any good at all, you had to whisper.
They're really into it, laughing and teasing each other, and I am looking at Pam and thinking once again how she is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen and that if we were back in the olden times she might have been made into a goddess because she is so beautiful. Sometimes I cannot stop my mind. It's scary.
Her youngest daughter shrugged. “Ain’t got no money, do we?” “I don’t understand. Why aren’t you pillaging like the rest of your kin?” “It was the Northlands, Da. Ain’t nothin’ to pillage but the crows in the trees.” “And snow,” their eldest added. “Lots and lots of snow.” Bram motioned to his study. “You know where I keep the gold coin.” As if on fire, their offspring made a desperate run for their father’s study, climbing over the table and fighting each other through the door. It wasn’t pretty.
She had not told her mother about Denys, but she had a suspicion that Mrs. Shannon knew all about it nevertheless. It was unlike her not to want to satisfy her curiosity when she came upon her daughter sobbing in various parts of the house. She had asked no questions; she had simply donned the role of the heavily understanding mother, and had done a lot of shoulder-patting and given Mary an expensive evening dress from the shop. Mary had no idea how she knew, but was certain that if she had not known she would never have rested until she did.
Pray calm yourselves. I have eleven children, and I am twenty-six times a grandma, and I have seen them all through their silly seasons, and when it come on them they will run the Devil bowlegged keeping up with their mischief. I think she'll wake when she tires of it. A child's spirit is like a child, you can never catch it by running after it; you must stand still, and, for love, it will soon itself come back.
In that second, I think about running through that door and going with him. But I know that it’s not the road I’m meant for.Because we’re both still incapable of love. We’re both not ready yet.And I know that I’ll miss him. And some nights, I’ll cry in my sleep.But for now, I’m okay. And that’s all that matters.The void in my heart has finally been filled.And as the train moves farther and farther from me on the platform, I can only smile.
...it really struck me that, just as people might look at me and never imagine I'd worked as a prostitute, they must look at some of those girls and see only the alienation and disaffection that hides their on fears and hurt.
Let me give you some advice here: People who want to have the sex talk with you will act the same way as people who want to murder you. First they get you in their car, so they're in control and you can't escape. Then they drive you someplace in the middle of nowhere.
When adults say, 'Teenagers think they are invincible' with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.
So how did you get this job, anyway?' I asked.'My science teacher.''Why'd he pick you?''For my brains and good looks, obviously.''Yeah, right. My social studies teacher picked me, but I can't really figure out why."'For your brains and good looks, obviously.''Um, thanks.' Had Aaron just complimented me? Wow.
Jordana is in the umpire's highchair.I walk under the rugby posts and on to the tennis courts, stopping a few metres in front of her, in the service box.Her legs are crossed.I wait for her to speak.'I have two special skills,' she says.She pulls a sheaf of papers from under her bum. I recognize the font and the text boxes. It's my pamphlet.'Blackmail,' she says.She holds up her Zippo in the other hand. I can tell that she has been practising this.'And pyromania.'I am impressed that Jordana knows this word.'Right,' I say.'I'm going to blackmail you, Ol.'I feel powerless. She is in a throne.'Okay,' I say.
I ignored him, concentrating on Lilith. "According to the stories, after you were expelled from Eden you went down into Hell, where you coupled with demons and gave birth to all the monsters that have plagued the world.""I was young," said Lilith. "You know how it is. We all do things we later regret, when we're being rebellious teenagers.
Teenagers are complicated and at times stubborn, yes, but we are not dumb. We see the world in a different light than the rest do, and sometimes, we’re misunderstood because of it. And that’s alright. That must be the definition of ‘human being’: Misunderstood. But neither of us should tolerate degradation in any of it forms.
There will come a time when a person you most likely pushed out through your vagina and nursed from yournipples, whose bottom you wiped, and whose snot and spit you cleaned up over several sleep-starved years will apprehend you with a mixture of boredom and irritation and say, ‘Get a life, Mum.’This would be a good time to remember that a) violence never solved anything; b) teenagers don’t have a full brain yet – the prefrontal cortex that controls the ability to make important distinctions, like who controls the pocket money, only kicks in around the age of twenty-four; and c) you are, in fact, the adult.
You will need to stay calm as you witness the candy floss in your daughter’s smile harden into brittle bitchiness. You will need to muster a new resolve as your son’s fascination with Pokémon shifts to porn. You will have to recalibrate your mothering instinct to accommodate the notion that not only do your children poop and burp, they also masturbate, drink and smoke. As their bodies, brains and worlds rearrange themselves, you will need to do your own reshuffling. You will come to see that, though you gave them life, they’re the ones who’ve got a life. They’ve got 1700 friends on Facebook. They’ve got YouTube accounts (with hundreds of sub- scribers), endless social arrangements, concerts, Valentine’s Day dances and Halloween parties. What we have – if we’re lucky – is a ‘Thanks for the ride, Mum, don’t call me, I’ll call you,’ as they slam the car door and indicate we can run along now.
We won’t be able to choose who we’ll have to talk to in order to keep advancing in life. We won’t always like them, and they will most likely not like us back either, so it’s wrong to confine ourselves in our own little worlds when there’s plenty of it outside to explore.
When it comes to generating writing material, teenagers are gold. Their world is a narcissistic, anarchic, paranoid hell of anxieties and stresses about how they look; how popular they are or aren’t; and how fast or slowly, big or small their private parts are growing. As an observer, it’s fantastic. Hilarious, at times. Poignant and heartbreaking. It is all the stuff of great human drama because, before your eyes, you get to witness character transformation. Boy grows into man. Girl grows into woman. Writers strain to make this shit up.But – and here’s the catch – we dare not discuss any of this if we want our kids to trust us or ever talk to us again. And that’s because, lifts and pocket money aside, teenagers crave privacy – the need for which hatches both swiftly and silently while we’re sorting out the laundry. It’s as if they suddenly wake up one day creeped out by the thought of all those years we wiped their butts and helped them put on their undies and they go into lock- down. They smoke us out, put up walls, close their doors, shut down their stories, and waft, earphoned, through our homes in a shroud of hormones and appetite. Their lives – in which, until recently, we participated with Too Much Information and gross oversharing – suddenly become ‘none of our business.
My darling goddaughter, Olivia, was the little girl of my friends, Max and Jeff. She was turning four, and it was time to transition her from her shortened toddler bed to a full-size big girl bed. It would be the bed where she'd have her childhood dreams and her teenage angst. I wanted it strong enough to tolerate her little girl bouncing and her teenage flouncing.It had to be perfect.
Elizabeth walked past just as Mrs. Ferguson, pulling down her wide-brimmed hat, announced that teenagers today were the most inconsiderate creatures she had ever seen. 'I'm afraid I have to agree with you,' Elizabeth had heard her twin say mournfully, clearly distinguishing herself from the inconsiderate teenagers milling all around them.