"If God wanted a world filled with saints, He never would have created adolescence."
I ran across those words in a book I read recently, and I had to laugh. It's so true!
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Yesterday I made beef stew in the crockpot. It simmered all afternoon and filled the house with a heavenly aroma. When C came home from school and smelled it, he hovered in the kitchen, drooling, until it was ready.
Literally.
He kept walking into the kitchen and staring at me beseechingly with his best attempt at (starving) puppy dog eyes. I would tell him it wasn't dinner time yet, and he would shuffle off despondently. A few minutes later he'd be back in the kitchen gazing at me hopefully with a pitiful "you never feed me" expression. Finally, at 4:30 I gave up and let him go ahead and eat some. You would think he had won the lottery! He ate a rather large bowl of the stew as quickly and ravenously as only a teenage boy can, moaning in happiness and making various other sounds of gastronomical euphoria.
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The other day I asked C if he would take the laundry out of the washing machine and throw it in the dryer for me. He cheerfully said that he would.
A couple of hours later I went into the laundry room to fold the laundry which I assumed would be dry by then.
I found the wet laundry sitting in the dryer, with the door still hanging open.
He never started the dryer.
Apparently, I wasn't specific enough with my request.
*sigh*
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Both of our teenagers have a bad habit lately of responding, "I will", whenever they are asked to do something.
"Would you please take the trash out?"
"I will."
Two hours later, the trash has still not been emptied.
"C & P, please come empty the dishwasher."
"We will."
Later that day, the dishwasher is still not emptied.
Apparently, when they respond with "I will", they really mean, "I will. Eventually. When you nag me 5,478 times more and start yelling at me in utter frustration and start pulling your hair out by the roots."
It is quite exasperating.
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Adolescence is a period of rapid changes. Between the ages of 12 and 17, for example, a parent ages as much as 20 years. ~Author Unknown
