How To Tell If You Have Teens In the House

How can you tell if your home is infested with teens?

First, get up in the morning and look in the refrigerator where you put in a fresh gallon of milk yesterday.

Is the gallon down to just a swallow? That's a sign.

Now count the bananas. You bought two dozen of them yesterday. Only two left? Probably a teen or two or three has been at them.

Check your clothes line. Is it covered with about a mile of denim and t-shirts? Teen boys live in nothing but that.

Take a peek in the front closet, where the shoes are. Do you see several boats in the shape of shoes? Teen feet are huge.

Are a couple of the bedrooms in your house best described as black holes? Those are dens; inexplicably, teens love to nest in the middle of the mess.

Listen carefully. Is there a strange noise for music emanating from the dens, or from the computer speakers? It's what passes for music to teens, so another sign.

Next we will go hunting for scissors, tape, hammer, batteries, flashlights, pens, rubber bands, and drinking glasses. All missing from their regular locations? They are probably under the teen nests in the black hole bedrooms.

Whatever you do, don't go actually looking in the black hole bedrooms, though. There might be something alive in there, and it would probably bite.

Do most of the phone calls coming into the house sound like someone on the other end mumbling? Teens calling for other teens don't want their voices recognized by adults.

Open your car insurance bill next. Yes, i know you don't want to, but you have to face it at some point. Is it astronomical on one car? The car you and your spouse never see? This probably means you have a teen who drives.

Now head for the bathroom. Is it hard to get in there because it's always occupied? When you do get in, do you find it full of 17 hair products, two baskets of make-up, lots of strange smelling spray deodorant, and wet towels on the floor? Typical teens spend 26 of the 24 hours of the day in the bathroom because they have to make up for the lack of time spent in there during preadolescence.

Finally, is angst dripping from your walls? Yes, you've got a teen infestation, all right.

Only thing to do is wait ten years. You and they will outgrow it.


Today is:

Celtic Tree Month Nuin (Ash) begins

Clean Out Your Cubby Holes Day -- internet generated, but if you have any cubby holes, give them a look today, make sure nothing is in there you don't want to see

Cold Day in Hell -- snow fell in the Sahara today in 1979

Day of Spenta Armaiti -- Zoroastrian (goddess of earth and fertility, especially celebrated by women; originally on Esfand 5th, which corresponds to 24 February, but is now celebrated on the 18th for reasons i can't figure out)

Festival of Women -- Persian (traditional, it has been kept even among those who are no longer Zoroastrian)

Fly-By for Fairies and Elves -- Fairy Calendar

Independence Day -- Gambia

National Battery Day -- probably created by the battery manufacturers, but they won't claim it

National Crab Stuffed Flounder Day

Pluto Day -- the planet/dwarf planet was discovered on this day in 1930

Rites of Tacita -- Ancient Roman Calendar (goddess of silence, rites to keep people from speaking out in anger)

Saidai-ji Eyo -- Saidai-ji, Okayama Prefecture, Japan (Spectacular and atmospheric naked festival dating back to the 14th century, in which up to 10,000 loincloth-wearing [and sometimes drunk] men battle for sacred wooden sticks [shingi] tossed into the air by priests.)

St. Bernadette of Lourdes' Day

St. Fra Angelico's Day (Patron of artists)

Tanigumi Odori -- Tanigumi-mura, Gifu Prefecture, Japan (dance festival)



Anniversaries Today:

Ohio State University is chartered as the first US land-grant college, 1804



Birthdays Today:

Jillian Michaels, 1974
Molly Ringwald, 1968
Dr. Dre, 1965
Matt Dillon, 1964
Vanna White, 1957
John Travolta, 1954
John Hughes, 1950
Cybill Shedherd, 1950
Andrea Dromm, 1941
Yoko Ono, 1933
Milos Forman, 1932
Toni Morrison, 1931
Gahan Wilson, 1930
George Kennedy, 1925
Helen Gurley Brown, 1922
Bill Cullen, 1920
Jack Palance, 1920
Hans Asperger, 1906
Enzo Ferrari, 1898
George "The Gipper" Gipp, 1895
Boris Pasternak, 1890
Nikos Kazantzakis, 1883
Sholem Aleichem, 1859
Louis Comfort Tiffany, 1848
Ernst Mach, 1838
Count Alessandro Volta, 1745
Uesugi Kenshin, 1530 (Japanese samurai and warlord)
Mary I Tudor, 1516
Saint Jadwiga of Poland, 1374


Today in History:

Origin of the Kali Yuga Epoch ("age of vice" or Dark Age) of the Hindu/Buddhist calendars, BC3102
Jerusalem is taken by Emperor Frederik II, 1229
Amda Seyon I, Emperor of Ethiopia, begins his campaigns in the southern Muslim regions, 1332
Henry Tudor (Henry VIII) created Prince of Wales, 1503
Zeeland falls to Dutch rebels, 1574
John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" is published, 1678
Fort Saint Lewis, Texas, is founded by Frenchmen under LaSalle at Matagorda Bay, the basis for France's claim to Texas, 1685
Quakers conduct their first formal protest of slavery in Germantown, Pennsylvania, 1688
The premiere of George Frideric Handel's oratorio, "Samson" takes place in London, 1743
Trinidad is surrendered to a British fleet under the command of Sir Ralph Abercrombie, 1797
The Detroit Boat Club (still in existence) forms, 1839
The first continuous filibuster in the US Senate begins, lasts until March 11, 1841
The first regular steamboat service to California begins, 1849
A direct telegraph link between Britain and New Zealand is established, 1876
Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is published, 1885
The Cave of Winds at Niagara Falls goes almost dry for the first time in 50 years, 1896
Winston Churchill makes his first speech in the British House of Commons, 1901
H. Cecil Booth patents a dust removing suction cleaner, 1901
The first official flight with air mail takes place in Allahabad, British India, when Henri Pequet delivers 6,500 letters to Naini (a distance of about 10K), 1911
The US and Canada begin formal diplomatic relations, with the appointment of Vincent Massey as the first Canadian ambassador to the US, 1927
The first Academy Awards are announced, 1929
While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto, 1930
The first Church of Scientology is established in Los Angeles, California, 1954
The Space Shuttle Enterprise test vehicle is carried on its maiden "flight" on top of a Boeing 747, 1977
Snow falls in the Sahara Desert in southern Algeria for the only time in recorded history, 1979
Dan Jansen skates world record 1000m (1:12.43), 1994