The ANGST Has Arrived

Teenage Angst is a horrible thing. I remember going through it. I remember feeling trapped in a black hole of uncertainty, indecision, powerlessness, and anxiety. When you’re a teenager you’re caught in “No Man’s Land”. You’re too old to be living your life like a three year old with no cares. You’re too young to do anything to really help yourself move forward. The angst of teenage years is centered on the waiting required to get old enough to do something about your life. In our society of instant gratification, no one wants to spend time waiting on anything anymore.

Speaking as a female, I think we suffer through an emotional rollercoaster when we’re working our way through ages 15 – 18. And our emotions push us to make horrible, knee-jerk decisions that we end up regretting. Everything seems like it is a “life or death” situation … if I don’t have a pair of those new jeans everybody is wearing I’m going to die … if I can’t get my haircut before picture day I’m going to die … if I don’t loose weight I’m going to die … if no one asks me to the Prom then I’m going to die. Each day brings its own mini-disaster that must be dissected and examined and wallowed in until it is worn out and we’re ready to move on to the next disaster. It’s almost like spending 3 years with permanent PMS. Not a pretty sight.

I am currently watching the step-son begin his teenage years. He is 15. And what he seems to be dealing with is about as polar-opposite as it can get from what I dealt with during those years. “Boys are different.” is what my husband keeps telling me. He’s right. Because this boy is becoming a creature I’ve never encountered before. If this boy has a brain, it is still stuck in the packaging and no one has taken the wrapper off to give it a try. He’s the most unconscious, unaware, oblivious, unconcerned, person on the planet. His shoes could be on fire and he wouldn’t notice because he’d be too busy staring off into space daydreaming about God knows what. That’s what is different about males and females in puberty …. The girl is highly and emotionally invested in every single detail as if this time in life is training camp for becoming a future control freak. The boy can’t seem to connect with the three year old brain anymore and the teenage brain isn’t ready to be used so he just doesn’t have a brain right now. This is his training camp for becoming a future de-sensitized butthole.

The step-son is experiencing all kinds of physical changes. One day I looked at him and he had two or three tufts of whiskers scattered across his face and neck. He started to develop a habit of pulling on them when he was reading. He looked like an old man pulling on his beard while deep in thought. I went to the drug store and bought some disposable razors and shaving cream for him and showed him how to shave.

We stood at the bathroom sink and I started my lesson by explaining how to put on the shaving cream. Then I gave him a razor and cautioned him to be careful so he didn’t cut his throat and bleed to death. I made him practice a few strokes with the safety cap on the razor. Then I let him take it off and try it for real. He took on such a serious face and did that thing of sticking his tongue under his upper lip to stretch it out so he could shave that. While he was shaving, he asked me how I knew how to do this.

I thought to myself, “Are you seriously that oblivious? Like this is some secret ritual of the Masons or something?” But what I said was, “I used to watch my Daddy shave all the time. I would stand in the bathroom next to the sink and watch him lather up and shave every Sunday morning. I’m showing you how he did it. He’s over 60 years old and hasn’t slit his throat yet so he must be doing something right. And besides, girls start shaving much earlier than boys so I’ve been doing it myself for years.” He gave me this look like he was considering how much truth was in what I had said and then gave me some kind of enlightened nod and went back to shaving.

About the time he got to his chin line, he nicked himself. You would have thought he cut his bottom lip off or something. “What do I do? What do I do?”

I tore off a tiny piece of toilet paper and said, “Here. Put this on it.”

“But don’t I need a band-aid?”

“Did you loose a body part? Good grief. No, you don’t need a band-aid. It’ll stop bleeding in a minute.”

“But what if I do this before I have to go somewhere? I can’t go do anything with toilet paper on my face!”

“You’re not a hemophiliac. It’ll stop bleeding in a minute. Calm down and work on another part of your face. We can’t be here all day. You’ll have to practice so you’ll get better and faster at this. You spend too much time in the bathroom these days, anyway.”

And that got the blush going. As if I don’t know what he’s doing in the bathroom all 400 times a day he goes in there for 15 minutes at a time and comes out red-faced and glassy eyed? Of course I know what he’s doing. Back when I had “the talk” with him, we discussed that aspect of life and I told him it was a personal and private thing and he needed to conduct those activities in private. With the most evil manipulative intentions in mind I said, “When you want to do that, you just close your door for some privacy. If your door is shut, I won’t walk in. I will knock. So just close your door so I’ll know you want to be private for that.” Well, he hasn’t closed his bedroom door in more than a year and has since found the privacy afforded by the bathroom to be more convenient. How he thinks no one is noticing all those 400 trips to the bathroom each day just adds more fuel to the argument that he is still in the larvae stage and mostly unconscious.

The other day he walked through the kitchen barefooted. My God! He’s got some HUGE UGLY feet! I can remember my mother noticing that same thing about my brother one summer day. “My God! Look at how huge and ugly your feet are!” she sputtered in amazement. My brother raised an eyebrow and gave her a shrug as he walked off. I didn’t blurt out what I was thinking about the step-son’s feet. But I pondered on it a while. I looked at him again when he came back to the kitchen for some water. Good Lord! He’s covered in body hair! When did that happen? It was like one night he went to bed and the next morning he got up looking like Cousin It from the Addams Family. Holy hell!

I can remember him being 8 years old, standing in the doorway of the bathroom with his underwear all rolled up like a thong around his waist because he didn’t bother to dry off after getting out of the tub and putting them on, and whining that he couldn’t get them untangled and begging for help. Not much has changed since then. I think he just started using a towel a few weeks ago. He seems to be developing an increasing interest in personal hygiene. I am sure I have some nubile young teenage girls at the high school to thank for that. But regardless of how it started, I don’t care because I am just thrilled beyond belief that he’s actually brushing his teeth and putting on deodorant all on his own without me having to harass him about it. There is no stink worse than sweaty-bad breath-sullen teenage boy. Yuck. Oh, well actually there is … its sweaty-bad breath-sullen teenage boy with dog poop on his shoes. Don’t even get me started down that road ….

And that brings me to the new attitude he is practicing. Have you seen this? It’s that sullen, apathetic, blank stare, open mouth posture. It’s the physical translation of the mental thought of “I don’t give a shit and wish you would shut the hell up.” And the eye-rolling? You can translate that as “What the hell would YOU know about it?!” What I really hate is when he’s staring right at me seemingly as if he’s listening and he’s nodding his head as if he’s engaged in the conversation; but, if you look closely, you can see Bugs Bunny Cartoons playing across his pupils. And when I say, “What did I just say?” he just sits there with his mouth hanging open and giving me the larvae stare and mutters, “Huh? What was the question?”

He is experiencing the complete antithesis of what I went through as a teenager. Of course, I can not relate to any of it. I am constantly asking my husband, “Are you SURE he’s going to snap out of it one day? How’s he going to get a job if he spends 20 hours a day in the bathroom in 15 minute intervals? Who’s going to hire him if he stands around with his mouth hanging open and staring off into space? He’s still in the larvae stage! When is the cocoon going to crack open??” And my husband tells me to have patience and that he’ll get there but it just takes boys longer than girls.

Oh really? Are you SURE? Are you CERTAIN that the boys EVER become conscious?? Because sometimes I look at my husband when we have conversations about topics he’s not so interested in and I see that SAME blank stare with that “Please shut up so I can watch this episode of COPS for God’s sake!” impatient posture. He’s not 100% awake yet, either …so what would HE know?!