Fucking teenagers

It's a classic case of the grass forever being greener on the other side of the ocean. Now that I'm finally home again and have been here long enough to get over the shock of the American-ness assaulting my new delicate European sensibilities, I remember why I wanted to move to Europe in the first place. I'll give you one word to describe my fight or flight response: teenagers.

I'm not sure what they do with European teenagers, but I almost never see them. I'm sure they exist. If I happen to be out near my apartment when the nearby English high school lets out around 2:30pm, they're everywhere. The nearest strassenbahn stop is covered with them, the strassenbahn itself is stuffed full of them, and the roads in between are crawling with them. But then, blessedly, they're gone. It's like in the Bible when God in his wrath sends the plague of locusts, and then Moses parts them like the Red Sea.

Okay - so maybe I'm confusing my biblical metaphors. But you get my drift. European teenagers obviously exist, but only in small and extremely localized doses. In America, it's as if the 12-21 year old demographic has taken over the country. Case in point: Saturday night some friends and I wanted to try out a new trendy bowling alley that's opened up near their house in Louisville. We arrived around 9:30pm to find the place swamped with people. It was a madhouse. But here's the crazy thing - I was older than at least 75 percent of them. Some of them were conceivably young enough for me to have given birth to them. And yet none of them seemed to be under any kind of adult supervision. It was as if the bowling alley itself was producing teenagers using some sort of back room cloning process, and then disgorging them onto the snack bar. It was bedlam. I couldn't stand the thought of staying in the place long enough to take my coat off, much less bowl, so I suggested we move on to the coffee shop. Where - of course - the teenagers had also taken up residence. You almost never see a group of teenagers in a German coffee shop; here they're loitering in the only available seating and slurping up latte's like it's their job.

And so, my friends and I have come up with a plan. From now on in the state of Kentucky, you're only allowed to be stay out as late as you are old. For example, if you're 18, you can stay out until 1800. If you're 13, you have to be in by 1300. Once you're 24, you can stay out as late as you want.

There are some kinks, but I know we'll work them out as we go.