Are there teens in your home?

I have one or three, depending on how one looks at it. My teen is fourteen and a half. My husband is another teen, a perpetual space cadet, an actual rocket scientist. Finally, Mommy has regressed to a stage of teen temper, little tantrums, and no remorse.

Let's focus on the actual teen, chronologically speaking. His room is a mess. We reduced the amount of possible objects to be scattered all over the place, to no avail. There is a bed, a dresser, a clothes hanger and the closet. They all sart from cells, dividing and dividing...




I was told to simply close the door. When you open the door, there are towels, underwear, shirts and bermudas, school assignments, all in neat piles on the floor. You tell him to clean up his mess. Get ready for a lower lip hanging, protuding to the point you could hang an umbrella on it. The pouting drives me insane. C'est faire la boude, a distinctive trait of the French.

Then it's homework. I feel I am paying karma for all previous incarnations I may have had. He can't find it. He does it listening or watching his videos on his iPod. I must watch so that he won't trip into La-La Land and not be done by ten p.m.

And this is a "good kid" without sagging clothes or rap or hanging out on the streets. He has been kept under a tight leash in some ways. Politeness, table manners. Adult chit-chat; rabid democrat.

He's independent, too. He rides taxis on his own. Takes his scooter to the market and pharmacy. He even has his own credit card.

But, oh! The perennial testing of limits, the attempt to talk back, the constant vigilance, for General Westmoreland was right, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." The girls, the volatile moods, no "emos" and please Mommy, no James Blunt. Ragtime on the piano, jazz on the alto sax.


My sweet, tough loving son, Gabriel. I love him but sometimes wish there were a closet to lock teens in and open it when they mature. Okay, it's not that bad. I am half Brazilian and one-fourth Greek and one fourth Russian. They are all temperamental people. I will live without the closet idea if at least homework is done.

And let there be no clothes on the floor, my dearest pumpkin...



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