By Roger Bluhm

    I don’t understand teenagers.
    Of course, I’m older than 40, so I’m not supposed to understand them any more, but I figured having a couple of teenagers, I might be able to.
    I don’t.
    It’s impossible to figure out what they are saying. I know it’s English they’re speaking, because I do recognize words and some phrases, but the context might as well be Polish.
    Take for instance a recent trip to a grocery store. My wife and I went in the store and came out with some goods, carried by a young man who works for the grocery store. Our daughters were in the back seat of the car and, after being handed the food from the young man, my daughters started quickly whispering and giggling in the back seat.
    After some kidding from my wife and I, my oldest daughter announced the young man was “hot.”
    Huh? She’s 15, not 20 or 25. She shouldn’t be making these kind of comments, especially in front of her father.
    I had to calm myself down and not rush back to the store to demand the young man leave town or face a beating with a tire iron. After all, he hadn’t said anything to my daughter, hadn’t even looked at her as far as I know, so how could I blame him?
    Yet, I couldn’t blame my sweet, innocent, teenage daughter, could I? Wait a second, sweet, innocent and teenage don’t usually go together, do they?
    Somewhere, “daddy’s little girl” became a teenager. What this means is that a look from me can create instant temper, a look from a boy can create instant infatuation, a look from her sister often creates instant contempt and a look from her mother can create instant happiness.
    Her moods change more often than I can change channels with the TV remote (and trust me, I am the king of the remote.)
    My other daughter is almost 14 now. She’s just as bad – if not worse – than her older sister. By the time she turns 15 or 16 I may have to grow my hair back out just so I can tear it all out.
    Seriously.
    The two teenagers together are angst-ridden. They often go from giggling and laughing with one another to fighting with one another in 2.2 seconds. Talk about hair-trigger tempers and the ability to take offense to an innocent comment, these two can create a war over saying “Good morning.” And often, it starts that early, goes throughout the day until my wife and I ban them to the upstairs just to get away from them.
    Others in the family insist that things will get better. Those siblings and cousins who have gone through the teenage years with their own children say that it will get better – eventually.
    The problem is simple: I was a teenage boy at one time and I KNOW how they think. If my daughter is calling these boys “hot” at 15, I’m never going to make it to her graduation, much less her younger sister’s.
    So, instead of buying a shotgun and alerting authorities they may be over to my house on a regular basis the next few years, I’ve decided to go the other route. I don’t understand anything they are saying – and I won’t.
    You can’t make me, they can’t make me and my wife won’t make me.
    After all, against my wishes and all my arguments, my wife insists on sending my daughters to the grocery store for items all the time.
    So, instead of locking her up in a room and making sure she is kept from the male population until she graduates college, we’re sending her on errands to places where there are these boys she considers “hot?”
    If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the basement, in a corner, just wanting time to go backwards or forwards in a big hurry.
    Maybe my daughters are ready to grow up – but I’m not ready for it. So, I’ll just keep pretending I don’t understand. Denial is a father’s best friend.

Bluhm is publisher of the Times-Record.