The Fat Woman and the Teenager OR How my Teeth are Grinding

How many times has it been said that one should beware the teenager?  How I admire the middle school and high school teachers for their ability to deal with this elusively recalcitrant creature of yore.  I always thought that no, it could never happen to me.  Then it did.

HIM, the man to I am married for over three decades, and I had a child late in life, so we both thought we were prepared.  However, I hadn't experienced that noise IT, the child who will be an official teenager in March, makes when it's listening to me and I'm saying something it doesn't want to hear.  The sound: a kind of sigh that is long-suffering, condescending, and sardonic, all at the same time.  I bet you know that sigh.  To be perfectly frank I probably did the same exact sigh when I was that age.  Somewhere my mother is laughing in her grave.  (That laugh from the characters on The Simpsons.  Haha!)



via GIPHY


I got the sigh this morning.  Why?  I think it was simply because I said good morning.  Then it dawned on me that I probably asked for this, in the greater scheme of things.  I tempted karma by saying my kid was different.  My kid is not like the other kids.  My kid won't be like that stereotypical teenager.  Haha!

Actually I think the kid is an emerging emo.  She wants to wear all black now.  Except for jeans.  Blue jeans, everything else black.  I tried getting into it with her.  ("How about that black shirt?  That would look good on you."  This generally results in me getting one of those sighs.)

No, I don't think she's stupid, but I wonder how stupid she thinks I am.  For example, she'll start explaining something to me like she was talking to a two-year-old.  ("First, Mother, you wipe your ass with toilet paper...")

And that sigh.  I want to put ear muffs on before she does it because I think my blood pressure shoots up ten degrees after I hear it.  All that drama.  Dram-ah.


via GIPHY
That's about it.  She's not even officially thirteen, and I'm counting the time down until she's twenty.  I think I'm hosed.