Are you 17 yet?

Teenagers act as if they know everything. Don't get me wrong; I adore high school kids and this could be the very reason why I like them so much. I love their outrageously daring styles, their body piercings and the way they live with no regard to others around them, or what the future may bring - truly, I'm not being facetious; let me say it again, I adore teenagers.

As a bagger, I work with many high school kids and when I try to tell them my age, they look at me as if I'm lying. These are the precious moments that make bagging all worth it. (And yet another reason why I love them.) Most of the kids can't wait to hit the big legal age, but as we approach our twenties and thirties, life takes a turn. We begin to worry about our jobs, our families, or lack there of - even when most of it is hogwash. Teenagers don't care about muscle spasms, wearing helmets while biking across scary city streets, and they NEVER double bag their groceries. I find this both reckless and courageous.

I've always believed that if we could combine the innocence and all trusting, loving children, with the uncanny capability and courage of teenagers to mesh with the all gentle, loyal humbleness of elders, we could potentially have a perfect human being. But somehow along the way, we lose track of what makes life wonderful. We lose sight of simple things. We spend our 20's making mistakes, our 30's recovering, 40's collecting stuff and the rest of the middle years complaining about futile things that happened to our stuff at meaningless, yet self-obliged functions with other stuff collecting people. By the time we can retire and enjoy life, we are too old to move. If I ever get to a point in my life where I can't banter lightly with teenagers, can no longer laugh at my idiosyncrasies, or fail to notice and appreciate another person's amazing beauty, then I may as well skip the middle years and sit in a white isolation room until death do me part.

Where was I? Oh, yes. Teenagers and my love and fascination toward them. I wouldn't date them or anything sick like that, but I wish I could transform into a mosquito on the wall and listen in on their conversations and watch obsessively as they move about this world. I would swarm around them in lust and bite them in a few places to get a bit of their angst-filled blood. I love being around them. They inspire and remind me to bring back my funk to the surface and live with more passion and love that surrounds my world.

Now if you would excuse me, I have to get some aspirin for my aching back.