Why I Hate Your Teenagers

Back in the good old days when I was a youth, before smoking bans, before Giuliani, we city teens had it good. Five bucks and a face that looked at least 16 got you a six pack of beer; the same five bucks, were you intrepid enough to wander uptown, bought you a bag of mild narcotics - most probably oregano mixed with a hint of THC. You bought your substance of choice and enjoyed it among friends in the comfort of someone's apartment (because there was always someone with an absent or absent-minded parent). Perhaps you ordered a pizza. Watched a movie. You know, kid stuff. In this way, the majority of your weekend nights were passed, the only difference being the number of people around you and the location (ok, our location was 9 out of 10 times the same location, but I will protect our hostess's identity - it is entirely possible her lovely parents still don't know what we got up to in their spacious home). We weren't bothering anyone, and none of us grew into a felon or even an antisocial member of society (including me).

I knew of a place called the suburbs - it was where camp friends lived. In these places, it was rumored, drugs and alcohol were both more taboo and more difficult to acquire. Also there were the twin problems of either being too young to drive, or driving while intoxicated and thereby killing yourself, your friends, and the innocent. The excellent movie Heathers also taught me that teens in the suburbs either tip cows, participate in date rape, or kill the popular kids. The suburbs sounded like no fun at all.

But then I met devoted partner and his tales of teenage antics sounded familiar if a little less vehicularly safe and thought that perhaps I had been too harsh on the suburbs.

I take it all back. You suburban teens are a bunch of maladjusted glue-sniffing f^$^&ktards!

What kind of meth-addled mouth breather steals a hubcap off a car parked at Stew Leonards? Really? I want to know. First of all, Stew Leonard's parking lot did not appear to be a happening location for a Friday night. I saw no groups of future WalMart greeters necking by the dumpster or trading their parents' prescription medication by the shopping cart stands. Stew Leonards is a family place. So either you little shits stole my hubcap while your parents were guzzling down free samples of cheese loaf (in which case I am going to revert to my earlier stance of requiring sterilization as part of the Senate health care plan), or you little shits cruise the Stew Leonards parking lot on Friday nights looking to rip off unsuspecting yuppies.

Furthermore, you obviously had time to do more damage, why didn't you take ALL of my hubcaps? Better yet, why not smash the window and steal my GPS? - that thing is at least worth money - you know, the stuff you buy whippits with. Yeah, I remember it used to be funny to steal the door lock casings from taxi cabs, back when those things were analog and made of metal, and I see that was wrong now, but I never, in my wildest idiocy, would have stolen a cab's hubcap!

So I hope you had at least a half hour of laughter over the theft of my hubcap. And then I hope you contracted herpes. Yeah, I said it. For the 50 bucks, plus or minus, you cost me, I have wished on you an incurable disease. Wanna know why? It's not that you stole from me, it's that you stole from me in a stupid manner. You stole something useless, which leads me to believe that you yourself (selves) are pretty well useless, so it's not like herpes will really decrease your value too much. Also, you seem to have a lot of time on your hands, time I think you should be spending remembering when to take your daily cocktail of anti-herpes medication.

Parents, I think it's quite clear that having normal teenagers who drink cheap beer and smoke cheap pot is infinitely preferable to having idiot teenagers who steal people's hubcaps from supermarket parking lots. Harvard has a long and storied history of admitting pot smokers; but I'd be willing to bet the number of hubcap thieves matriculating there is statistically insignificant.

In the meantime, that burning sensation is my vengeful god dealing on you!