Pressdog.com

Get a Clue, Junior

By Bill Zahren
(Posted 03/31/00)

I have two daughters, 8 ½ and 5, and no sons, which isn't all bad. Sure, it would be nice to have that whole father-son male bonding thing. But I'm not missing the stupidity. Teenage boys act brain damaged.

I was brain damaged as a teenager. If I had a son, he would be destined to act brain damaged. You don't realize that goofy, stupid behavior is part of being a male teen until you're closing in on 40, with kids of your own, and observe the current crop of male teens.

What's up with the hair, by the way? I often work out with the children at a Greater Des Moines area YMCA and I gotta say, I don't get it. You guys look like someone splattered Clorox on your heads. The former football player in me wants to walk over to some 16-year-old with long, chemically tousled hair and whisper, "love your hair," in his diamond-studded ear, and then make a smooching sound and wink.

And then run like hell (or in the case of my 36-year-old biomechanical train wreck of a lower body, hobble away at high speed) because said 16-year-old could very easily kill me. But, of course, he has a tattoo so that makes up for the hours he spends at the beauty salon.

OK, OK, deep in my Protestant soul I know it's wrong to judge and that this guy has every right to fix his hair like he wants. He certainly shouldn't take hair or style tips from the likes of me and definitely shouldn't care what I think. I'm just turning into my father. He probably wanted to whisper, "Nice paunch, Porky," to me.

So I let the Golden Rule constrain my actions, and I regret my thoughts. I only share them here to establish my frame of mind. It's a literary trick. Don't beat yourself up, I'm a professional writer.

Of course I blame testosterone for stupid male teen behavior. Sixteen-year-old boys are basically hormones in very baggy pants with tattoos and chemically treated hair. No where is that more evident than in a weight room where the testosterone virtually spews out of male pores as we flex and heft in an often futile attempt to become muscular specimens. I've always admired women who use weight rooms. They're like fawns going unafraid into the lions' den.

Mix brain damage with testosterone and you get this:

Just this week, I was doing my dumbbell front shoulder raises (nicely working the anterior head of my deltoids) at the local Y. A lovely high school girl was stretching on the mat next to me. I imagined my eldest as a high schooler and smiled.

Well, this (by definition) brain-damaged high school male started stretching on the other side of her and said: "I figured you played soccer" (apparently this was the continuation of an earlier discussion) "your legs are just HUGE."

I nearly burst out laughing in mid movement, and immediately felt like throwing one of my 25-pound dumbbells (that's right 25 pounds, cause I'm a liftin' stallion) at him.

"Well that's rude," the girl responded. The father of two girls in me cheered. Speak it, sister! A girl not crushed by some boy's thoughtless, body-image assaulting remark. If her father had been there, I'd have embraced him in fraternal celebration of the moment.

Now, this was an attractive girl whose legs were not thin but certainly well away from "just HUGE." But that's totally beside the point that you never, ever say "your legs are just HUGE" to a female. I think he meant it as a sort of guy-like compliment and started stammering on about how her legs were "muscular" and "look so great" and stuff like that.

A guy loves to hear virtually anything of his called HUGE (especially what you're thinking of right now), because "huge" often equals "muscular" and that's what guys in weight rooms live to hear. About the only thing guys don't want called "just HUGE" is his "head" "gut" and "ass."

The girl was very kind about it and told him she understood and "don't worry about it." But right after she walked away, I felt like sitting him in time out and having a stern, father-child like talk with the boy saying:

"OK, make a note, junior, a woman never EVER wants to hear that any part of her body is HUGE, with the rare exception of her breasts, and then only in private and only after you know her well enough to have had a close, biblical look at them, which in the case of either of my daughters will only be after you're married to her for a couple of years.

"A woman definitely never wants to hear that anything below her waist is just huge. As far as you're concerned, everything down there is always slim, shapely, lovely, perhaps waiflike and just plain striking. So, you should have said something like, 'I knew you played soccer because your legs are in such good shape. Or well-toned. Or even sculpted.' Never huge.

"Now go to your room and think about what we've talked about. And don't come out until you've written a note of apology to this girl who should have thrown a 45-pound weight on your crotch for that remark."

I think it's a good thing I don't have sons. I'd be insane or dead (or both) by age 45. And I pity the boy who ever says something like that to my youngest daughter, Jena the Destroyer. She'll beat him senseless. (That's my girl.)

And then ask him where he gets his hair done.

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