Because every other teenager has electronic gadgets and name brand clothes, status in their cliques is established on ownership: having cell phones with built-in cameras, ipods with all the accessories, and jeans with the right cut are important attributes for many teenagers. These two girls don’t look like they want for anything. But giving children whatever they want often comes with a cost; with each new toy or gadget (especially those that are unearned), children can lose respect for parents and the hard work it takes to provide such luxuries. Such children come to believe that parents exist only to serve as a means of satisfying indulgences, and the parents succumb to guilt for fear of being labeled mean, unfair, or even worse, neglectful. I’m convinced that as a culture we create monsters out of our children.
My sister tells me to mind my own business but each time I resolve to ignore the girls I end up staring at their intent faces and how they practically fall into their cell phones. They are waiting for a text message from somebody, anybody who’ll answer them. Why? Out of desperation, loneliness, boredom? Why must they know the whereabouts and exact activity of the others? Is knowing that so-and-so got that date with the cute boy truly that important? And…when can they get together to have fun. What is their kind of fun, I fancy?
The rock-jazz music is good enough to take my attention away for a brief time. Then they get up and join the table of two adults that look like their mother and a man old enough to be a grandfather or the mother’s second husband or boyfriend. I say, second husband because he is totally passive, looks through the kids, and does not interact with them at all. It’s almost as though the teens do not exist. As their food comes, each girl gets a super-sized coke. Diet, of course. It has to be diet because being thin is supreme. During one musical set they leave four times, walking out with cell phones in hand as though the things had been crazy glued on permanently. The girls were too young to smoke, so it had to be a pee break then back to the table for more fries and coke, and maybe a blank stare.
Then I see one of the girls take a sip from her cup and spit an ice cube at the woman, looking over at the other teen that joined her in quiet laughter. The old guy could have been blind; he did not even wince or comment. The woman made no audible response. I sat behind her and barely got a glance at her stoic face as she stooped to pick up the ice that had fallen on the floor near her foot. I waited in anticipation for the mother’s reprisal. There wasn’t any.
Coming Up: Part III...
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