Teen Wit

21st June

I’ve just been in The Teenager’s bedroom. It contains the usual detritus of clothes hung on the floor, penicillin in coffee mugs, Robert Pattison competing with blue-black hair dye that has somehow made it to the walls. In vain, and knowing that my words would fall on skull-candy ears, I commanded she clear the place up. OK, maybe I didn’t so much command as ask politely? Suggest mildly? OK I virtually begged. She may have gone to do it now. I don’t know. More likely – and I’ll check in a minute – she’s on Facebook holding ten conversations, dishing out relationship advice and organizing a take-over bid of the local ‘emo park’. Actually, what am I thinking? Her bedroom is the command-centre of local teen activity. What right do I have to impose my bourgeois tidying up regime when so much teenage angst and happiness is at stake?

I find myself out-witted at every turn. The other week The Teenager returned from town without most of the items I had given her £60 to buy. She had £28 worth of underwear & hair dye and handed me £15 change. Reluctantly. When asked. And I was lucky to get that. Now I did maths at school, when adding and taking away was in fashion, and worked out that I was £17 short. Some probing revealed she had had to buy a birthday gift for a teen friend. Some other friends would be chipping in with their contributions at an unspecified date, meanwhile I was subbing them too. Oh, and a trip to MacDonald’s for lunch. The Grown-up Sister weighed in that The Teenager had still not paid her whack for a sibling Christmas present syndicate and that was another £15 owing. And then there was the phone bill. I decided to take action.

After much discussion with Mr F (my new husband and former Head Teacher), I decided that The Teenager should earn some money. At 14, she’s too young for most jobs and she walks too slowly to do a paper round, so I had the bright idea of jobs around the house. I stopped short of paying her to tidy her own bedroom, that’s what she’s meant to get her pocket money for, but she could clean my car. And Mr F’s car. And her Dad’s car. Inside and out for five quid a car. Then maybe a bit of ironing, though I’d have to teach her how to do it!

After much cajoling she managed to clean our cars, even if she did miss one side of mine, so was £10 better off. To speed up the debt-paying process and stash enough cash for travel to a concert she had tickets for, she set about selling some of her clothes to her friends. Once again Facebook came into its own. I thought she was quite enterprising, even though I had only bought said clothes a few weeks earlier brand new.

I paid her a fiver to do some ironing. But her greatest triumph was when her father gave her £5 to NOT clean his new car! At this point, she was able to pay her sister back and get to and from the concert and buy her tea at Subway.

Guess who did not get paid. And was 15 quid lighter having paid her to do chores I had invented so she could earn something. Hmmm… way beyond the wit of Jan.