Those years when, as you try to start becoming an
adult, you engage in any number of
behaviors that would get an actual adult
arrested and a true
child sent to
therapy.
Because of
corporate America's current
fetishization of
teenagers, an unhealthy amount of attention is focused on them at a stage in which they are unusually
vulnerable: when they are consciously trying to become something more than they currently are. As a result, we have 16-year-olds trying to emulate the people portraying teens in
television and
movies, most of whom are at least 10 years older than the people they are supposed to be.
Of course, there is a great deal of
potential in being a teenager. The great majority of the rest of your
life is still ahead of you, and there is almost no time when you will be as aware of breadth of
possibility that is still available to you;
everything is still on the horizion. It may be that you will never have more
options, or at least more possible options, than as a teenager.
Despite being an
excuse for some truly
inappropriate acts, committed both to one's self and to others, the teenage years can be wonderful. Quite literally: full of
wonder.
But for the most part, they usually sucked.