Common sense doesn't inhabit teens' world

Why is it the most important thing you have to teach your child is the hardest thing you'll ever have to teach your child?

No, I'm not harping on the toilet seat thing again. I'm talking about common sense.

I'm talking about explaining to the 16-year-old that when you asked him to wash the whites, you meant underwear, not sheets.

I'm talking about the 10-year-old, who can't figure out how I always catch him eating PBJs in the den (verboten!) just because when I call for him, he answers, "Hrrmmphh! Crmminghh!"

And then there's the oldest, almost 19, who called me, concerned because his car tags were expired.

"They can't be," I messaged him on Facebook. "I saw your tags when you were home for Easter and they said June. They aren't due for two months."

His insurance card was what had expired. (I forgot to send him the new one.) Please, please tell me how this kid, who found his own grants and scholarships and did his own taxes this year, couldn't tell the difference between an insurance card (small, cardboard, fits in wallet) and a license tag (big, metal, doesn't fit in wallet). Of course, he's got that absent-minded genius stereotype thing working for him, too.

And it's not just my kids. I see them every day when I drop the two youngers off at their schools. Just this week, a teenage girl walked out in front of my van. She didn't look left, She didn't look right. She didn't look up from her cell phone as she was texting some earth-shattering news to the girl who was walking beside her. It was probably something along the lines of "Like, Did UC the sknk that HOT-T was with 2Day?" or "OMG, I think this irritable old lady is about to run over me and I will so totally not be able to wear my Vera Wang knock-off prom dress with a cast on my leg."

I'm sure she'd have a way of saying all that only requiring six keyboard letters, two symbols and one obscene gesture, but I don't have time to figure it out.

I was looking up some Jonathan Swift quotes for this column, trying to find the one about how he doesn't like mankind, but is rather fond of Tom, Dick and Harry. I thought it would help me explain why, although I like almost every teenager I know (we won't talk about the kid at Food Lion who puts the giant size can of peaches on top of the bread), I don't like teenagers as a whole. A whole big bunch of them, that is.

One reason is that they're kind of scary. When they get together in large groups, they've got this eerie Children of the Corn thing going for them, where they all band together against us because they know some dark, evil esoteric secret we don't. Like how to program TiVo.

I can actually remember being one of them. (I knew how to stop the flashing 12:00 on my mom's Betamax). I remember stepping out in front of vans with that same cool arrogance. Of course the vans were full-sized and usually painted with wild scenes of galloping mustangs or Burt Reynolds. Swivel captains chairs and floor-to-ceiling shag carpeting ...

Another reason I'm not crazy about teenagers en masse is they practice obscure religions. They aren't Wiccans or Yanni acolytes or anything -- but when they get together in groups of three or more, they seem to worship at the altar of mass stupidity. Don't believe me? You haven't been watching America's Funniest Home Videos, have you?

This strange congregation is the only thing I can think of that explains their obsessions with all things Miley, badly written vampire books, and piercing strange body parts.

We had more sense when we were teenagers. We only obsessed about all things Van Halen, badly-written TV sitcoms (Charles in Charge, anyone?) and only piercing our ears -- eight times on each side.

I think the main reason I prefer teens in small groups is because it's less frustrating. I want so badly to tell them, "Don't make the mistakes I did! Finish college on the first go, not 10 years later. Don't confuse sex with love. Don't believe your mother when she tells you everyone is wearing Gunne Sax to the prom!"

One on one, I might be able to get a teenager to listen; but as a group, the Altar of Stupidity invokes the Cone of Silence and they won't hear a word, even after you show them what Gunne Sax dresses look like.

I think it's odd that there are so many movies out about swapping ages with someone else -- "Big," "Freaky Friday," "13 going on 30," "17 Again," etc, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. The plot line is almost always the same and the message is almost always the same, but my man Jonathan Swift said it best.

"No wise man ever wished to be younger."

-- Mary Reeves is a staff writer for the Times-Gazette. She can be reached at (931) 684-1200, ext. 215, or by e-mail at mreeves@t-g.com.