Teenage behavior: What could possibly go wrong?

This piece isn't solely intended to make my fellow parents of teenagers feel a little better.

But it may.

It also isn't meant to encourage society at large to feel a little more comfortable about our future.

But it might.

I'm currently experiencing a lot of "back to the future" moments, since I'm simultaneously being dad to a fifteen-year-old sophomore and working up a flyer for my class of 1981, thirty year high school reunion. That's us up there—the mighty Auburn High School senior class of thirty years previous.

Can you spot me? I'm the white kid with the feathered hair, parted in the center.

We looked so happy-go-lucky, so innocent and so...thin. Perish the thought that this wholesome crew would be perilously at risk for sexually transmitted diseases, teenage pregnancy and alcohol-related death.

But we were, and apparently a lot more at risk than today's teenagers. In a feature entitled "The kids truly are all right," written for cnn.com by Laura Sessions Stepp, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist specializing in adolescent issues, she states that nearly every high-risk teen behavior has witnessed declines since 1990.

Smoking, drinking, pregnancies and suicides have all dropped substantially. So have fighting and firearm-related deaths. The only problem which has worsened is that more teens are getting fatter.

If forced to pick my teen risk poison, I'll take fat any day.

We parents complain about our teenager constantly clutching her cell phone, monitoring her texts with the vigor of a marine guarding the American embassy in Tripoli. That phone, however, is more of a parent's ally than our kids can imagine.

It's our property, and it's not their birthright, but a privilege which we parents administer.

Sure, our kid has instant access to which socks her BFF has decided to wear and how long it took to find them next to the cat box. But for every hundred messages which comprise the Ocean of Teen Text Minutiae, one buoy of alarm may prove a lifeline toward keeping our child and her friends safe. GPS devices can be activated on most cell phones, which implies an inherent mistrust. But I don't care.

I really love being the cool dad, but I can't be cool to a daughter who no longer exists.

Teen prefrontal lobes experience a perfect storm of rebelliousness and an inability to comprehend consequences. These aren't bad kids; they're just kids, so our job is to educate them, to prepare them and to give them a safety net, even if we're jackbooted Nazis in their eyes.

When we were teenagers, our parents either trusted our word or locked us down. They often sat on a Friday or Saturday night, wondering and hoping about our whereabouts and our condition. It no longer has to be that way, and technology offers the perfect excuse for our children to remove themselves from a dicey situation.

After having read the article, I'm encouraged, yet still apprehensive.

I'm so glad to hear that more of them will be around to change my diaper one day.

Now, if they'd just listen to some better music.

My back wants to know how your neck is doing

I think I'm now "of an age."

I joined some of my oldest friends for a ten o'clock Seahawks game this morning. The three of us have known each other for around thirty years (since we were teenagers), but we haven't met up for the past couple. We decided to find the absolutely "diviest" (pronounced diy-vee-ist) bar available for a Sunday morning rendezvous with Seattle's fraternity-flag-football-league-worthy Seahawks, and we found the perfect place online. The reviews elaborated upon "strong drinks, decent food and a local clientele." Sounds perfect.

When we united, the place was closed, so we caravanned up to a casino in Tukwila, Washington. The establishment was odd; every gaming table was attended by a card dealer, yet the bar was attended by no one. We waited for about ten minutes, and finally inquired of one of the nine idle dealers as to the whereabouts of the barkeep. "He's on smoke break, " Number Three replied.
I thought, "He must be smoking a about five Camel Ultra-Longs in a row, because it's taken twenty minutes. Finally, he showed up and we got the necessary accoutrements to continue our morning,

As I mentioned, my two friends and I hadn't seen each other for a couple of years, and we possessed no agenda for our conversational subject matter. However, the chat immediately focused on each of our respective health statuses:
"I'm not sure if you knew this, but I had surgery on my back last year."
"Really? I tore my meniscus."
"I've been having neck issues."
"How's your (eighty-year-old) mom?"
"She's doing great. How's your (seventy-six-year-old) dad?"
"Never better. In fact, he's on a cruise right now. Did I tell you about this mole that's changed color?"
"No. Let me show you this thing on my..."

That went on for about an hour. In the end, though, we had thirty years of ground to cover. It's not like you merely cover the past two years; there's also material from the 70s, 80s and 90s to retouch upon. I sometimes forget how certain people share certain experiences with you, and those happenings dredge up laughter from a part of your solar plexis you forgot existed.

We finally arose to leave from the uncomfortable barstools. I'm sure, as we walked three abreast to the front door, a witness to our collective profiles could make out three steps on the evolutionary chain, from Cro-Magnon to Neanderthal to Human, as we gingerly straightened our upper bodies and bounded toward the exit.

Great to see those monkeys.