COMMENTARY
Raising teens can never be dull

By Rochelle Riley
Knight Ridder News Service

You know you're the parent of a teenager when:

• You can't find your clothes, particularly the ones you don't wear outside (like baggy pants, the shirt with spots from the last paint job, and your favorite Joe Boxer pajama bottoms).
• Entire juice cartons disappear from the refrigerator, like socks from the dryer.
• There is always a last-minute math test, even one that was announced last month.
• Boys call and ask for your only child, and you want their name, age and Social Security number before handing over the phone.

But you really know you're the parent of a teenager when you begin to exchange the stories with other parents. Sure, all parents brag: "My child made an A on that test." "Well, my child could teach that test!" But the stories I'm talking about are the tales of "You won't believe what they did this time!"

I've had my share of stories. My daughter has been so grounded at times that I've had to think of a new word for it. And I thought I had the story of the week when I arrived home last week to find the entire house filled with smoke. Our dog, Lucy, was panting at the garage door, and my daughter was nowhere to be seen. Smoke had drifted into every room. I couldn't shake the image in my head of her lying somewhere, suffering from smoke inhalation. I was scared to death until I saw a kitchen window open, and I could hear my kid walking around upstairs.

"What's going on? Are you all right? What happened?"

She calmly descended. "What do you mean?" she asked through the haze. "Is something wrong?"

For a minute I saw Derrick Boone, a guy who had been a year ahead of me in college who loved showing freshmen the ropes. He taught me that the best initial line of defense for any misdemeanor was "Deny. Deny. Deny."

I told my daughter, "Do you not see all this smoke? What were you doing?"

"I just cooked some bacon," she said. "You want some?"

When I recounted the story to my friend Shelley, she was ready. But her story wasn't about her own kids. It was about her friend Diane's son, an introvert who'd rather read a book than attend a basketball game. To improve his social life, his mom made him go to a basketball game, figuring he would meet people, maybe talk to somebody. So he went, sat at the nosebleed level and read a book.

A reporter spotted him in the rowdy crowd and asked why he was there. His reply?

"Because my mom made me. She said if I didn't come here, I had to go to some old lady's birthday party."

The following Sunday morning, Diane's phone rang off the hook with friends asking whether she'd seen the newspaper. She later asked her son again about the game, asked whether he'd met any new friends, whether he talked to anybody.

Nope, he said.

"You sure?" she asked.

He was sure. So she showed him the paper, pointing to his quote.

Unimpressed, he told her that adults don't count.

It'll take me a while to top that one.