Both of my kids are teenagers in high school, which means it takes a fair amount of patience on my part not to end their lives on a daily basis. I find this awkward point in my children’s development sort of ironic because I worked so hard during the first part of their lives to protect them. I bought expensive child-safety seats, sturdy bicycle helmets, and lollipops with special non-choking stems to preserve my children’s lives just so they could grow into teenagers and make me want to kill them.
My kids don’t realize their dad wants to kill them because I haven’t bothered to text them that little piece of information. They are oblivious to the way they make me crazy these days. It’s like the synapses in their brains can’t connect the simple dots that lay out the message, “Dad is mad at me for forgetting to take out the trash … again.” Scientists have been trying for years to study the teenage mind, but it has been a difficult task because there doesn’t seem to be a brain present in the teenage cranium to actually study. My hypothesis is these scientists have been looking in the wrong place: The teenage brain isn’t located between the ears—it’s placed firmly up the butt. This also explains why teenagers don’t listen very well.
My theory on butt-brain has been proven over and over again by the actions of my children and has thus resulted in the nicknames I use to refer to them. I call my boy Huha, pronounced Who-Hah, which stands for Head Up His Ass. And I call my little girl Pita, pronounced Pee-Tah, which is the acronym for Pain In The Ass. Pita and Huha don’t listen very well, and they don’t understand things like responsibility.
Pita thinks she is the center of the universe—it isn’t the sun, which provides warmth and life on this planet, it’s my daughter. She’s the reason everyone on this planet exists. We are all here, anxiously awaiting her next “selfie” photo on Instagram. Will she do a duck face in this photo? Will this one show us her new outfit from Forever 21? We’re all anxiously waiting to like and comment on her next earth-shattering iPhone photo of herself. Pita gets mad at her mother and me when we don’t follow her every second on Instagram. We shouldn’t have to ask her how her day was at school. We should’ve already known it was a terrible day because of her hair, since she chronicled it with 60 pictures of herself between first and second period. Duh!
Huha is a different story. He knows he isn’t the center of the universe because that is his sister, Pita. Huha’s problem is concentration. Huha seems to know only one vocabulary word and that is, “What?” No matter what you ask my son, his response will be the question, “What?”
“How was your day, son?”
“What?”
“Your day? How was it?”
“What?”
“Did you have a good day today?”
“What?” (Each “what” gets more and more annoyed with me for asking.)
“Never mind. I don’t really care. Just take the trash out.”
“What?”
But Pita and Huha struggle with simple tasks like taking out the trash. It’s difficult to look cute and take a cell phone photo of yourself while dragging the garbage can to the curb. It is also difficult to take the trashcan to the curb when you never really acknowledged you were asked to do it. “What?” Together these two butt-brains are raising my blood pressure higher and higher each day. They might just kill me before I can kill them.
My wife, whom I love, is less affected by the many adventures of Pita and Huha. She birthed both of them so she feels the need to protect them from their father. When I get angry at my son for asking me “what?” seven times at the dinner table, my wife intervenes and tries to calm the situation. She claims that my head is firmly up my own ass half the time so I shouldn’t be so hard on the kids. Her claims have yet to be substantiated. I asked her for some proof that I have butt-brain and she said just two simple words: laundry basket. I had no idea what she was referring to. It is a concept I am not familiar with.
Back to the many adventures of Pita and Huha: The other day I asked the dynamic duo if they had any homework. Huha said, “What?” Pita said she didn’t think she had any. I asked her to be more specific. Pita replied, “I don’t know! If my teacher really wanted me to know what my homework was, she would have texted it to me.” I tried to explain to Pita how ridiculous that was, but I was interrupted with her rant about how her teacher “makes her lesson plans while having tea parties with Satan.” Obviously, her teacher didn’t get the memo explaining Pita was the center of the universe. Turns out that nobody got that memo, because it wasn’t a memo at all. It was actually a text message disguised as a duck-faced selfie on Instagram explaining the physics of the new universe. All things stem from a 14-year-old high school freshman girl. Duh!
Even though I say I want to kill both of my teenage children, don’t be alarmed; I won’t actually harm Pita and Huha. I love them more than all the money in the world, but I wouldn’t pay a nickel for another set just like them.
Rob asked Pita and Huha to fold the laundry. Huha said “What?” and Pita took a cell phone photo of the laundry pile. Contact Rob through Executive Editor Ryan Miller at rmiller@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 26 – Oct 3, 2013.