The Teenage Neurotic

Although puberty as a physical process takes only a few years to blaze its hirsute trail, its consequences reverberate like a cannon shot through all the teenage years. The coming of age is a disruptive shock to both body and mind, and it sends showers of sparks in directions that are unpredictable to say the least. Neurosis is the natural state for teenagers to be in, and it doesn't take much scouting around to see why:

1. The Whole World is against teenagers. Although many neurotics believe this to be true for all their lives, it is actually only true when they are in their teens. In the eyes of their elders, teens are either overgrown children or childish adults and only time can straighten them out. Adults in places as diverse as Belgium, Peru, and New Zealand agree.

2. Teenager's parents are strange and intractable. Up until this point, Mom and Dad haven't been too bad - a few unnecessarily stern warnings here, a few social gaffes there, but generally okay. Now all of a sudden they seem determined to make up for lost time. Just about everything they say and do is a hideous embarrassment. They can't be trusted in public places. They can't be introduced to your friends without making some ridiculous comment. They insist on advancing ideas that are shopworn and without merit. They think they own you.

3. Teenagers begin to experience powerful yearnings that can no longer be satisfied by Saturday morning cartoons on TV. The problem here is that the teenager's body has landed in a strange new territory before the brain has learned to speak the language. As first these yearnings are so indistinct that girls mistakenly take up horseback riding while boys go for football and fast cars.

4. With only algebra, English composition, and a little French or Spanish to guide them, teenagers suddenly have to decide how to dress, how to look, how to act, and what to say. So they take the only sane course under the circumstances: They wear identical clothes, they strive to achieve the same "look", they all act the same, and they all say the same things.

5. Teenagers have nothing to do. Unless you consider dancing in front of the mirror, doing each other's hair, volunteering for a menial job at the state hospital, or caddying as fun things to do. Much better to hang-out in a parking lot, smashing bottles and smirking at passers-bys.

6. Teenagers have heard that acne goes away eventually, but they believe that an exception can and will be made in their case. They also firmly believe that the more important the social occasion, the greater the likelihood that a pimple the size and intensity of an automobile's taillight will appear to cast its unrosy glow over the proceedings.

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