Backseat - From Where I Sit

April 2006

By: Michelle

My Teenager/My Self

It takes less than five minutes walking inside any shopping mall before the spiky hairdos, droopy drawers and mini-mini skirts have you shaking your head and hissing under your breath “Teenagers!” Harboring one of those much misunderstood beings under my roof for the last 4 years has provided me with a living laboratory in which I could study the unusual behavior that emerges between the ages of 13 – 20. After careful examination, I have come to the unusual conclusion that 17 and 40-something just aren’t as far apart as I had first imagined.

All it takes is a quick look in the bathroom to see we have more in common that just breathing the same air. The “Stridex” zit cream is perched in one corner directly opposite the “Nivea Visage Q10 Advanced Wrinkly Reducer”. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to determine which one belongs to me and which one belongs to my son. However, the goal is the same. We both are vainly trying to fix the havoc nature is wreaking on our faces but we just need a different formula to get there. Then there is the hair to consider. Again, neither of us is satisfied with what nature has provided. Following along like many male species of birds, my son opts for the more brilliant colors such as metallic red, electric blue or ultra lime while I am just satisfied with anything that hides grey. Who ever thought a bottle of bleach could bridge the generation gap?

It is more that the struggle to maintain beauty that binds us together. We also struggle to remember. My son forgets to do his homework and I forget his name. I can’t tell you the number of times, I have called my son by my daughter’s name or worse, I have even called him by the dog’s name. And to think I used to laugh at mom when she did that to us (somehow it isn’t as funny on this side of the generation gap). He forgets where the laundry hamper is located. One look at his room floor will tell you that. I forget where I put the remote control to the television set. Just last week I found the remote in the refrigerator.

We spend hours searching for where my son forgot he put the cordless phone (I guarantee the person who thought of taking phones off a leash didn’t have a teenager.) Be patient if you ever call my house. Let it ring. We are scrambling around, following the ringing until we can find the phone. To be fair, I lose my car keys as much as he loses the cell phone. In order to combat this problem I now have a set of keys that beeps when you clap. (Works great except for the times when the keys are in the fridge with the remote.) Oh well, at least our house is a very musical place. On any given day you are bound to hear all manner of ringing, clapping and beeping. If you disregard the grumbling and cursing that accompanies it, you would think we were one big happy family. When I think about it, the car keys are probably the biggest symbol of unity between myself and my teenager - I can never find them and he can’t wait to get his hands on them.

I grew up hearing “children should be seen and not heard” only to learn in my maturity that teenagers today have a different spin on this. Parents should be neither seen nor heard, especially when you are around friends. Don’t believe me? Just go to a High School football game. I guarantee you if you painted yourself green and used a bull horn to call out your child’s name, he wouldn’t acknowledge you. By the way, I have threatened to do this to my son many times. I act just crazy enough on a daily basis to keep him guessing as to whether or not I am serious about it. My best parenting tip: Keep your child guessing about your sanity. However, you have to know when to stop doing that because beyond a certain age, it can backfire on you - Like around the time he starts looking at nursing homes.

I can’t pretend that I didn’t behave exactly the same when I was younger. I vividly remember having all the answers then just as my son believes he does now. Growing old was something that wasn’t going to happen to me. My high school class motto was "We are foxy. We are fun. We're the class of 81" and I planned to live like that forever. Anything and anyone beyond 30 years old was way beyond forever as far as I was concerned. I was too busy rebelling against convention and I was never going to stop. Now that I am well past “forever” the only rebellious thing I still do is ride a motorcycle (which by the way is the one thing that my son will publicly acknowledge as “cool”).

I spent my entire teen years determined that when I grew up, I was going to be a fun mom. I practiced all these years telling funny jokes only to overhear my son whispering to his friend in the back seat of the car the other day, “Just humor her. She thinks she’s funny.” I can remember saying that about him when he was learning his first joke and repeating it over and over to anyone he could corner into listening. I guess life does come full circle and I am receiving that payback of “I hope your child grow up to be just like you” that mom threatened me with all those years ago. But really, it’s not such a bad thing. He’s a pretty cool kid and he thinks I am a pretty cool mom – at least when he isn’t around his buds. Besides there is only a few more years left of his youth. If I time it just right he should finish about the same time I enter my youth for the second time. Ahh payback.

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