Teenage Brainiacs

Teenage Brainiacs

“Jason, you need to clean your room!” Mom said, standing in the doorway. Jason was watching ‘Teenage Brainiacs’ on the big screen.

“I’m making a plan…” he answered, eyes still glued to the TV.

“It’s a room, it’s a mess, you need to un-mess it.”

“Yes,” he said, “but I’ve done that, and it always turns into a mess again. I’m getting some perlective.”

“I think the word is ‘perspective…’”

“Oh.”

“And tell me how watching TV is helping…”

“See those kids? They’re smart, big smart, they crack mysteries in minutes, with their brains! Thinking! And they always have clean rooms!”

“And this is helping, how?”

“Well, if they can do all that stuff, and still have clean rooms, they must be doing something right. I was figuring it out.”

“It’s a TV show, they don’t even live there…”

“I know! But when they do things, you can see stuff.”

“Like what?”

Like when Ed was talking, he picked up the toys in his room and put them back where they went. And when Gina got her bike, she ran to her room and grabbed her sweater, which was hanging in the closet!”

“Oh?”

“She must have put it there! She’s thirteen, her mother probably doesn’t hang up her clothes anymore. I mean Gina’s, if she really was a teenager.”

“I suppose…”

“So, I’m about to turn thirteen, I should be doing that stuff, to be real like those stories are pretending to be.”

“So, you’re gonna clean your room?”

“Well… yes, but don’t forget I won’t turn thirteen for two more months…”

“Got it,” Mom said, trying not to laugh out loud, because her phone was on ‘record’…

She’d gave him the recording when he turned twenty-one. He still cleaned up his apartment, every day, thanks to ‘Teenage Brainiacs”.