Smells like teen spirit

by effenheimer at 11:03 AM on July 17, 2003

My young nephew is hitting puberty at 11. The men in my family tend to abandon childhood rather quickly and become huge pricks. So I've had plenty of reason recently to think back on the wonders of puberty.

I wouldn't relive puberty for anything. I turned into a right psycho and had little to no help at all from my partental units who just found the whole thing far too embarrassing and visceral to deal with honestly and – god forbid – openly.

But I was watching that episode of “The Twilight Zone” where all the old duffers want to be kids again ("Kick the Can" for you geeks) for the umpteenth time and I thought, hell, I could go for some of that and I'm not even 80. Heck, sleeping in the back seat of the car while my parents drove alone would be worth a trip in the wayback machine.

Once you get back prior to the veil of hormones, B.O. and funky brain chemicals, you start to recall that life was pretty sweet. It was only when “nature took its course” that things started to suck like Hoover Supersuck 5000 with the crevice tool. For me, being a kid was a pretty good time if you don’t count all the merciless beatings I received for the improper storage of the pretty new dress my mommie dearest bought for me. “NO WIRE HANGERS!”

The best part of childhood really is all about the mind free of uncomplicated thoughts. No lonlieness. No watching the weight. No bills. No retirement to worry about. Plenty of toys. Warm blankets. A boundless imagination not yet killed by thousands of hours of TV.

Besides the Cold War, the world stage was pretty tame when I was a kid. Nam was largely over by the time I knew what it was. I remember asking my mother when I was about five if I would have to go. “No,” she said. “The war will probably be long over by the time you are old enough to join the army. And if its not, I’ll break your feet. I didn’t spend three weeks in labor in just to send you off to get your manhood shredded by a bouncing Betty and I certainly didn’t bring you into this world so politicians could use you as cannon fodder in an Asian land war. No one, I mean NO ONE fights a land war in Asia.” Then I’d down three bowls of “Super Sugar Crisp.” Yes, that was a real cereal.

When I was a kid, I could actually enjoy running around like a complete jackass after a ball or a frisbee. The only video game we had was “Pong” and it was worth about five minutes a year just to remind yourself how boring it was. I could do amazing things with my endless days. Play with a dog, love unconditionally, find amusement in a butterfly or a simple-minded episode of “Speed Buggie.” Yeah, our cartoons were better than “Pokemon.”

Life was good before S to the E to the mother-fuckin' X came along and put the stank on everything, made everything a dirty joke. Innocence is only possible before puberty or after a really bizarre weed whacker accident. When I was 10, even snapping the occasional training bra had absolutely no sexual connotation for me whatsoever because we didn’t have cable back then. We got our information the old-fashioned way, through the Sears catalog after our parents told us we were too young to be asking such questions. To me, snapping bras was no worse than pulling pigtails. It was just good fun until some filthy-minded adults had to go and put the taint of sex upon our actions. Oh yes, I remember all-too-well the looks of scorn and shame as my “partners in crime” and I were interrogated about subjects we knew nothing about – the perverts accusing the innocent of perversion. For shame.

“I don’t know why we did it,” I said like Mickey Mouse as my chestnuts had yet to fall from the tree. “We were just playing.”

And we were.

Yes, puberty is when the fruit of youth ripens and really starts to stink. You don’t know what hate or anger really is until its fueled by sexual jealousy or territorial rage. Puberty exists to make sure your parents want to get rid of you by 18. It’s nature’s way. And the hair, that was almost as good an idea as the big shower room in gym class. What’s wrong with a little privacy? There were two kinds of guys in the showers of my junior high, the guys who were too embarrassed of their bodies and the guys who were way too proud. I suppose there were three kinds of guys in there if you count the day the gym teacher got in there with us. To this day I still suspect he just wanted to show us who was boss.

And what guy can forget the first time he got the biggest surprise puberty has to offer? Hallmark should make cards because the parent hasn’t been invented who can handle that day. On the front would be a mortified young man, his eyes wrapped in tears of anxiety. On the cover it would say, “OMIGOD, what happened?!” On the inside it would say, “Don’t worry, it’s not broken, it's SUPPOSED to do that!”

In a way, it makes for much better story telling if we leave our young’n’s unprepared for that moment.

I need to send some of these nuggets in to the “social expressions” companies. I mean, somebody has to get rich writing crap and it might as well be me.