Life as a Teenage Robot

Life as a Teenage Robot
By: Meg Sjoberg

Life is an adventure that brings you to awkward crossroads and forces you eye to eye with weird, usually uncomforting situations. These particular misadventures and shortcomings have a tendency to mold us into the people we become. I deiced I would take a little stroll through life, or at very least what I have seen of it. I felt the need to put into words the way I have seen the lonely existence we conform to in my short 19 years of life.
You start off as an infant, helpless, speechless, no motion control, no hope to survive on your own. We hope the two people that created us in an act of “love” will be able to decipher our cryptic cries in order to provide us with the necessities we require to sustain life. Now the amazing fact about this is that some parents can tell what their child needs by the way he or she cries. When I heard about this, it made me imagine the cries being sort of a mood ring for the parents. That’s kind of neat.
Well life continues rolling on and we come to the lovely little stage in life were everything is “mine”. This is the first of many places I must double take on human nature as a whole. Mine. The word in and of it self feels threatening to me, not to mention that at this point in our small life we have no right to say it. You see at this point in our miniscule existence we have been on this planet for approximately 730 days, that’s all. In all reality nothing is truly ours at this point, the whole truth of the matter is that the people put in charge of us at birth spend their hard earned money and limited time to get us everything we could possibly need, and lets face it, pretty much everything we want as well.
We continue the process of growing up, learning and finding out how the world works. Right about this time is when we hit elementary school. This is where in my personal opinion our respect for out much deserving elders both starts and ends. Here I pause again. What exactly is it about respect that makes it so difficult to maintain throughout life. Elementary school you Have Mommy and Daddy so close and you wouldn’t change it for the world. I remember not being able to get home fast enough to tell my parents about playing Four Square at recess and how fast I made it through the mile in Gym. Anyway, It takes awhile to get used to all the other kids and not being home all day with Mommy and Daddy but you get into a routine and you don’t like it to be broken. The parental guardians stay close at hand for this part of life and there is not even a snowballs chance in hell that you would let that change. You become close with the kids from school and are amazed when your parents make a “play date” with the ones you happen to talk about the most. They listen to every word you say, smiling and nodding never giving you any reason not to trust them. They help you find your dress shoes for picture day, the ones you haven’t worn since Christmas even though your feet won’t be in the picture. They replace the batteries in their camcorders countless time and plaster snap shots of you any place there is room. At this point it’s still ok to bee seen holding Mommy’s hand and Daddy can fix anything from the scary noise outside your window to the Boogieman under your bed. Things just seem to work.
Then, you hit middle school. You start to realize you can be a little more independent. Cooties seem slightly more attractive and you find yourself rolling your eyes at your former protectors. You have mom drop you off a block from school so no one can see her nightgown or hair curlers. You start to think your pretty smart. Cliques form and judgment starts rolling in from every direction. Quiet Friday nights turn into parties with friends and Mom and Dad can’t be too close anymore. Of course rides to the mall and friends houses are still a necessity. You start telling them less and less about what happens at school. You start dressing yourself for picture day, witch coincidentally is one of the only picture Mom and Dad can get for their frames at work. You still hold Mom’s hand, as long as no one is watching, and even though you don’t admit it Dad still Checks the closet once a week to make sure the Boogieman didn’t have the nerve to come back. Thing still seem to work, for now.
Then, there’s the big one, High School. The first day you walk through those doors you don’t think anything could be better. You’re still getting used to the fact that some of your friends went to other schools, and slowly the “life long” friendships you made dwindle. You start dating, with or with out your Mother and Fathers blessing, but would never mention to them there is the sex speaker coming to heath class next week giving out free condoms. You and your friends get cars and pass drivers ed and car pool to school, making the sacrifice of 10 minutes just so you don’t have to critique Mother’s choice of sleepwear before leaving. Now, you know your smart. You have found your place in your clique and you have figured out how to blend in escaping the blunt end of most of the judgment. Your parties on Friday nights turn into weekend bashes when friend’s parents go out of town. You start responding to “how was school” with a half-hearted “fine” while shutting the door to your bedroom. Mother and Father no longer ever know when picture day is, and half the time you forget yourself. See you have to look good everyday or that cute guy in Math class or the new girl in Gym wouldn’t ever notice you. You wouldn’t think about holding your Mother’s hand and your Father would be dead if he stepped foot in your room. Your still happy, things are going your way.
Senior year comes around and your collage acceptance letters start rolling in. you and your friends start making plans for how you’ll “keep in touch”. Senior pictures get passed around and the pressure to keep your grades at a passing level begins. You start realizing more things, like how many of your friends you probably will never see again, how you only dated a cretin person to be socially accepted and how your parents are and always will be there for you. You go Prom shopping with your Mom and help your Dad wash the car in the driveway. You turn down a weekend long party to chill at home for once. You know you still have a lot to learn. You sit down at the family dinner table and bring up some concerns you have about the future. You stick with your clique and you keep blending, but only out of habit. You mature and things start to make sense.
Now after High School things change. Some keep their High School friends and follow them to collage. They Change their major 15 times trying to decide what they want to be when they grow up. Some get married and start families in two bedroom apartments they have been saving for since freshmen year. Others work two jobs and start adding to their savings account for their sports car and dream house. Still others stick to parties, they house hope and only work to support their smoking, drinking and drug habits. Then there are those who think they have it all figured out until the real world hits them in the face. They are the ones that get lost. We are the ones who are lost. We live in our parent’s basements; we work dead end jobs, or don’t work at all. We’re broke and we don’t know what we want to do with our life.
So I guess my only real point here is how important a relationship between you in your parents becomes as you get older and learn more about life. It may not be cool and you may not get along with them but in the end opening up and telling my parents what was up in my life was probably the smartest choice I ever made. Now I’m not the closest with my parents by any means but I really don’t think they get enough credit. It took me 19 years to realize how important of a role my parents play in my life. I do hope to be a parent some day and with that and the thought that it took me this long to figure this all out I hope reading this will help some of the younger generation to figure all this out a little sooner.