Tag Archives: teenagers

Aug10

few things are more satisfying than seeing your children have teenagers of their own.~doug larson

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i have a great affection for babies and teens

awkward and gawky and working so hard to be independent

saw this group performing at a local small town event

song full of angst and sass, just wanting to be left alone to party.

what being a teenager is all about

trying on all the faces and seeing what fits 

some things never change just appear in a different form.

 

 

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“foolishness, radicalism, morbidity are marks of promising youth, the obvious signs of inward ferment. the melancholy pose, the affectation of pessimism and cynicism, the sentimentality, the conviction of genius, that many of us deplore or deride in certain young people, may be as natural to their age and disposition as the sense of immortality of which Hazlitt writes so feelingly in one of his essays. we should rejoice to find them. they are among the indications of spiritual growth.”

~Robert M. Gay, “As I Laye A-Thynkynge,” The Atlantic Monthly, January 1917

 

Jul12

unbottled.

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 gaggle of giggling gangly teenagers
brimming with unbottled energy
 marching down the sidewalk
where are they headed?
do you cross the road?
share the space?
join the group?
think back?
walk by?
smile.
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‘maturity is only a short break in adolescence.’
-jules feiffer

Jul9

no one knows.

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oh, audrey, class of 2020 –

this harkens back to my days 

in the 70s

painting on my best friend’s parents’ new car

(my parents said absolutely not)

proudly plastering on

the glory of our days in school

the coming glory of our leaving

driving around all day

in the hot sun

 noticing with surprise

when we scrubbed it all off

 even though the paint was gone

the sun had baked our message on

the marks from the paint remained

never able to be truly washed off

memorializing our message into eternity

 my friend’s parents with an equally surprised reaction

 at least audrey painted on the windows, not the body

she will go far, that one. 

 

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“no one knows what’s a good idea or a bad idea until you try it.”

-marc randolph

May21

Nothing surpasses the beauty and elegance of a bad idea. – Craig Bruce

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it seemed like such a good idea at the time.

brilliant, in fact.

we were teenagers, with time to kill, and we had a half day of school.

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i invited my friends over for an afternoon of watching our favorite soap opera, all my children.

all sorts of crazy fun was going on with luke and laura and the people of pine valley

and we were going to watch it in style.

my friends were happy to come along for the ride.

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this is how i imagined us watching the show that afternoon….

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reality was a bit different however.

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we took a fan outside,

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wheeled the old tv out on a cart,

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plugged everything in with a giant extension cord,

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got the lounge chairs and drinks in place on the patio,

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put on the sunglass and the sunscreen,

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whipped up a huge buffet of all of the mini frozen pizzas in the house,

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and then.

my mom came home.

and shut down the whole operation.

something about feeding the whole neighborhood

and moving the entire living room to the patio.

and trashing the kitchen.

and as we cleaned up and put everything back,

we made plans to do it the next week at my friend’s house.

it was kind of like a teenage version of ‘cat in the hat’.

except my mom came home in the middle of it.

—

Happy people plan actions, they don’t plan results.
 Dennis Wholey