Teenage Wasteland

People under the age of 20 scare the living hell out of me.

Teenagers have zero understanding of how life works. Unless they grew up in a Little Orphan Annie-type setting. Then they understand the way life works more than I'll ever want to know. Because most teenagers are inexperienced with the ways of the world, they are prone to doing terrible and illogical things such as shooting animals, driving drunk, taking dumps in public spaces, and wearing pajama bottoms for pants.

When I think about the potential ways that I am to expire, death by teenager is one of my greatest fears. Teenagers act without knowledge of ramifications. They will shoot you point blank with a smile and then go eat a peanut butter & jelly sandwich. THEY WILL EAT YOUR FIRSTBORN AND THEN USE THEIR RIB CAGES AS TOOTHPICKS.

If you don't agree with me, take a look at this story that happened on Friday night.

A friend and I were out and about on the hipster-centric east side of Austin. After the bars closed, we retired to my car which was parked in front of an apartment/artist workspace near the popular bars on east 6th street. As my friend and I sat in my car talking, we watched four underage children climbed the roof of the workspace and begin throwing back what looked like something that was fished out of a dumpster from a back alley in South Central. When they weren't drinking, they were throwing glass into the street. Like many bored and ill-raised children, they began scanning what was in their peripheral view to play with and their eyes landed on my car. They suddenly became very concerned with whether or not my friend and I were making out. When they realized that we weren't making out, they decided it was in everyone's interest to coach us into making out. They then decided to collectively pull down their pants.

Fortunately for us, like squirrels with ADD, the foursome promptly forgot about us and either a.) passed out on the roof b.) made out with each other c.) fell down. My friend and I anxiously watched as the four tried to descend from the one story roof onto a ladder that none of them could seem to find. As we waited with bated breath as one after another barely made it down the ladder, what we anticipated finally occurred in the last girl who caught the ladder with her face. On the way down she also managed to punch one of the kids and lose her wig.

After they gathered themselves from this minor setback, they promptly remembered that we were sitting in the car and ran over to interact. At this point we finally got a good look at what we were dealing with. The first word that comes to mind is "vacancy" when recalling the eyes of our four hecklers.
And "death".
Vacancy and death.

Maybe it was their age or the fact that they drank enough to motorize a fleet of Hummers, but there was a piece missing from their souls. They told us that their names were Forrest, Thomas, Pez, and something that sounds like Iris and that two of them lived in the workspace that they had just climbed down from. They were very concerned with whether we were happy or not and punctuated their point by screaming, "BE HAPPY!" over and over. They then decided that they wanted to share their giant tub of Jell-o and ran inside to pull out a bag full of two-feet long straws that we could use through our window. We thought we bought some time to leave when we told them that we didn't like red Jell-o and that they should run back inside to get the green Jell-o they also made. Unfortunately for us, the bowl of green Jell-o must have been sitting right next to the door and before we could blink, Forrest was standing outside my driver's side window like a dutiful dog with a sparkling bowl of liquefied gelatin. When we refused to interact with them, Forrest got angry and began running his mouth over my window. He sprinted back towards the apartment and turned around to shout one last "FUUUUCCCCCKKKKKK!" towards my car and then went inside of the building. My friend and I hoped that this would be the last time we had to deal with Forrest and the children from Hell. It was not. Forrest then opened the door and shot a gun towards the ground.
A gun.
An underage kid with a Jell-o fetish, anger management issues, and a body full of what could have been plutonium...and a gun.

After the gun made it's debut into the story, we decided it was time to leave.

The adventure of the evening overshadowed the potential danger we felt at the time, but into the next day I couldn't help but feel that that was kind of fucked up. Maybe I was sheltered as a child, but is this normal behavior? What is so wrong with today's youth that this was an idea of an evening well spent?