Friends, I am tired. I was up late and also up early, dealing with teenager crises.
Today after a (false alarm) freakout the roomie had over a potentially pet-harming bug in the kitchen, I promised her we didn’t have an infestation of cat-eating centipedes. I also jokingly apologized for the recent infestation of teenagers, but promised they fell into the mostly-harmless household pest category.
The more I think about it, the more I think I was only a little off. They do have some similarities to many household pests.
- Where there’s one, there’s more. The kid’s room is like a clown car–just when you think there can’t possibly be one more human being in there, out pops another. And that one is probably a young’un you’ve never seen before.
- They’re nocturnal. Turn the light on late at night and they scurry for dark corners.
- They leave messes everywhere. Sometimes you only know they exist in your space because of the mess.
- If you feed them, they will come. They eat like–well, like a plague of locusts. Grocery budgets cower before them!
But while I sometimes want to knock some sense into them, I never want to step on them. So…more like puppies. I’ve been known to swat them with rolled up newspapers (teenagers, not puppies, I’m aware we have better ways to train dogs now.)
Yes. Like puppies. So cute when they’re asleep in little piles of adorable (how do teenagers sleep 3-5 to a bed? How?) So destructive when they’re awake. Enthusiastic and loud and tripping over each other and breaking things…pouncing and chasing and experimental biting. Dear lork, the experimental biting… (children, stop biting each other. Seriously. Stop it.) You can’t deal with one at a time–they run in packs. They’re always squabbling, but let anyone try to mess with one of them, and the whole pack goes on the offensive. They need housetraining. (No, they don’t piddle in the corners, but good lork, how do they not know how to turn the light off when they leave a room? Or put their dishes in the dishwasher? Or not leave their clothes on the bathroom floor for days??)
I could go on and on. They’re like cats–best friends one minute, then fighting from one end of the house to the other, then falling into a pile for a good nap or maybe some mutual grooming. Like goats, wandering around nibbling things to see if they taste good and DON’T EAT THAT WHAT THE HELL?
But really, they’re just like…teenagers. Well-meaning, confused, full of bluster and bullshine, bumbling around looking for the free food.
Kinda like baby pandas.
