No, there isn’t
a misspelling or a typo in the title of this article. This isn’t the name of a
teen slasher movie with Miley Cyrus and Zac Effron in the lead parts. I’m
referring to the Edge of Dorkness.
According to the
Royal British Society of Psychology (R.B.S.P), the “Edge of Dorkness” refers to
that threshold, or time span, that elapses from the moment your child stops
seeing you as Superman or Wonderwoman, to the time when he realises you’re a
total dork. There is a formula which psychologists from Oxford ,
along with mathematicians from Stanford
University
EOD = [ (AOF) /
(AOC)] * [LTCPA – LTCRPA]* &^
Where
EOD: Edge of
Dorkness
AOF: Age of
Parent
AOC: Age of
Child
LTCPA: Last time
child paid attention to what you said
LTCRPA: Last
time child really paid attention to
what you said
&^: Constant
which has been determined after 78.500 case studies over 17 years
That’s right;
the team of 415 scientists that worked 24/7 on this project for seventeen years
studied 78.500 single cases and found that 99.2% of the time the result of this
formula, regardless where and how it is applied, is simply zero. This possibly
explains why 38% of those scientists committed suicide; 49% became taxi drivers
and the rest have bought fish and chip shops.
This stunning
conclusion means basically that one sunny Saturday afternoon you may go to the
movies with your 13 year old son to watch a kids movie, let’s say “Pulp
Fiction” and then go to a McDonalds for a burger. A typical father/son outing.
On Sunday morning, this very same cute teen boy, who thought every single word
you ever said was directly taken from the Bible, doesn’t even say good’ day to
you. What is worse, when you address him with your usual and warm “Good morning
mate” he responds, without ever looking at your face, with what you believe is
a grunt.
But you’re
wrong. This is no ordinary, run of the mill grunt. When teens reach the Edge of
Dorkness they actually start speaking in foreign tongues, namely Russian. What
you thought was a grunt is actually as follows:
[1]заблудитесь вы мужлан
Many language
and phonetics specialists have studied this phenomenon which has baffled
parents since the Stone Age, especially because Russian wasn’t to be invented
for another 30.000 years.
When
Archaeologists from The Metropolitan Museum in New York Granada Spain
[2]заблудитесь вы мужлан
But if your teen
has reached this period of his life, you shouldn’t worry. It will pass, and
most of the time there are no immediate mortal consequences. Only a small 10 to
15% of teenage kids end up pulling out a Uzi machine gun and killing fellow
students and teachers at their local High School. Yours might not be one of
them.
When you go past
the Russian-speaking and gun-wielding phase, the next thing you need to worry
about is obviously sex, especially because these days kids are openly exposed
to sex everywhere they turn.
I clearly
remember the first one I saw a female breast in a movie. I was fourteen and had
cheated my way into a rundown theatre where they were screening a police movie
with Clint Eastwood. This was rated R-18. At some point in the movie a skinny
blond took out her shirt and flashed her boobs at Clint Eastwood, who didn’t
even flinch in his typical tough guy attitude. I felt I was about to explode,
but thank God I didn’t, at least inside the theatre.
Today’s kids can
access not only boobs but any other parts of the female anatomy they like from
their i-phones whenever they want to. Most of the time for free. And sex on TV
is for everyone to see. I find this really unfair. You don’t know how much I
had to go through when I was a teenager to get hold of a Playboy magazine or a
porn movie in Betamax format. The worst part is, today’s teenagers are not
grateful about this unfair advantage over their parents.
All this new age
exposure to sex forces us parents to be alert at very subtle changes in your
kid’s attitudes that may depict there’s some sexual activity going on. For
example, if your 16 year old daughter leaves the house in heavy make up;
completely clad in red PVC ; high heels and a whip at 1AM everyday, you should
start thinking “This is a good time for a sex talk” But this is only me, maybe
you find this normal. If your 17 year old son keeps buying wigs, makeup and
dresses on e-bay, you are probably overdue for a father-son talk. Then again,
it’s only me, maybe I’m just overreacting. What I mean is, keep an eye on your
kids activities and act sooner than later once you find something unusual. One
piece of advise I once received from an uncle said “The two most important
tasks as a teenager parent are to keep the girls off the pole and the boys off
a dress”
I hope the above
information is useful for those parents with kids about to reach The Age of
Dorkness. No, you don’t need to poison your kids cereals, just follow the
advise above and hopefully you’ll manage to survive this era along with your
favourite family members.
If you happen to
come across a parent who tells you the above is false and that their 16 year
old boy is as sweet and loving as when he was 7, I’ll give you the number of a
man called Tony Sollozzo who operates from the back of a restaurant in Lygon
Street. He’ll take care of your friend for you.
But, as a proud
parent of two teenage kids, a girl and a boy, I've had a very good experience
so far. My Russian has improved greatly and this means they can now abuse me,
and ask for money, in two different languages. Lucky for me, the strong Aussie
dollar buys very cheap Rubles.
Estupendo Leopoldo, como siempre un placer leerte.
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