Communication - now that's the ticket

By DAVID J. COEHRS

Expositor Columnist

My dad had a simple philosophy of life: Treat others well. Help when possible. Work hard. Sugar is good.

He also enforced simple rules for our household: This is not a democracy. Be respectful. Do your homework without being nagged. Go to bed without complaining. And most importantly: I'm an old-fashioned dad of stern German stock, so behave. If you don't, they'll never find your body.

I have tried to enforce these laws, plus a few of my own, with my own kids. I have tried. Really, I have.

But there seems to be a hot spot in their teenaged brains where I can't get through the mush. It's the area controlling They're Not Mine

First off, when I imply that I try to get through their brain mush I'm lying. A lot. When children get savaged by those teenage hormones they go completely bats. Trying to understand anything they do is as pointless as trying to lose weight on a deep-fried diet. One minute they're four and reverentially trusting that you know everything. Then they're adolescents, growing big horns and bigger mouths, regarding you as just an imbecilic adult who counts with his toes and couldn't find his own rear end with a GPS.

This mutation would be easier to handle if you weren't the one who washes their clothes and scrubs their dishes and forks over allowance and toils to keep them sheltered and fed. But you are, so their teenage years are like rooming with Hannibal Lector, and if you could send them and their teen angst somewhere like Siberia, you'd definitely find any way to cough up the expensive travel fare, even it if meant safecracking or breaking kneecaps.

But, alas, you must either learn to live with them or bury them alive in the basement, and since one of those options is illegal, you try to keep a modicum of peace flowing between you and them. You train yourself through breathing exercises and an ample supply of adult beverages not to react to their teenage arrogance, barbs, cynicism and criticism, not to mention their constant sulkiness and vocabulary, which devolves into a single word: "Whatever."

You bottle up all that infuriation, and the desire to go upside their pimply heads with a mallet, and instead buy a huge magnifying glass and focus the sun and all your anger on entire colonies of ants in your yard: "Don't tell me I don't know what I'm talking about!" Sizzle. "Mutter under your breath at me?" Crackle, sizzle.

But the area that self-help method fails to cover is They're Not Mine.

"Would you please pick up all of those dirty dishes lying around and put them in the sink?" I ask one of them.

He's sprawled on the couch watching cartoons, and rolls over just enough to glimpse the dishware carnage surronding him.

"They not mine," he says, rolling back to his TV.

"Then would you please take them all to the sink?," I ask the other one. He's crawling across the floor, tormenting the cat.

"They're not mine," he replies.

"Then whose are they?" I demand.

"I don't know," they say in unison, as if they'd never be caught dead using an eating utensil.

"Well, they're somebody's," you say.

"Maybe they're yours," the older one says sarcastically.

Teenagers love sarcasm. It's one of their four basic food groups. I probably loved sarcasm when I was a teen. But I knew better than to use it on my father. He would catch it in his hand and stuff it back into your larynx.

"Just maybe," I say, "one or both of you had better quickly remember who brought out those dishes and then put them in the sink, or just maybe two boys I know will become experts in the art of extra and very unpleasant chores involving the toilet and used cat litter and hauling perfectly good game systems out to the trash."

I haven't seen them move that fast since that time they accidentally set fire to their underpants. Communication - that's the ticket.