Pasco: It's still tough to be a teenager

It's still tough to be a teenager

By Times staff writer

NEW PORT RICHEY -- Thinking back, I realize now that I didn't have enough takeoff speed.

Then again, I've never had takeoff speed.

When I hit the mat, my momentum took me more downward than forward. Halfway across the mat, my glasses missing, I slid to a halt and sank into the foam beneath.

On both sides, lithe teenagers effortlessly glided past me.

It was official: I was old.

Not that I consider 30 as old as I used to. Say, back when I was 29. But for some reason I had fooled myself into thinking age is a state of mind. It's not. It's a state of body.

Come to think of it, the state of my body at 20 wasn't much better than it is now.

Which is why, when the dark clouds rolled over Des Little Stadium last Thursday and unleashed a torrential downpour, when the kids ran back onto the field and turned the Sunshine Athletic Conference track meet into Pasco County's own Adventure Island, I thought to myself: I can do this.

Oh, the wonders of the teen mind. Call what they did brazen spontaneity. They dived across huge puddles and slid across the rain-slickened pole vault and high jump pits.

Adult orders to get off the field fell on deaf ears as the spectacle played itself out.

For a few fleeting moments there were no FCATs to worry about, no exams to fret over, no boyfriends and girlfriends and parents and jobs to occupy the mind. All the problems of teenagedom, for just a few minutes, were all wet.

Maybe that was what made sliding across the pole vault pit so alluring. Maybe, just one more time, an inspired 30-year-old can be a teenager again.

But it wasn't until I was lying face-down, sinking into the middle of the pole vault pit, waiting for someone to roll me back into the ocean that I remembered I was a miserable teenager who prayed for an asteroid strike or graduation day; whichever came first.

I rolled the rest of the way across the mat and landed in a puddle on the other side; everyone laughed (with me, I hope, not at me).

I had sworn off further humiliation until River Ridge's Jessica Verga motioned that I should follow her for a second try across the Pole Vault Pit of Youth.

I guess she was athletic enough for the both of us. The more aerodynamic Verga practically flew across. I barrelled my way to the other side, pulled myself over and landed on my wet back.

I wasn't the only adult who decided maturity and dignity were overrated. Gulf coach Dean Lofton slid across the pit, as did Mitchell coach Bill Napolitano.

Thus emboldened, the decision was made to start the 3,200 meters and the 4x400 relay. The runners kicked their way through 4 inches of water, their hands held aloft as their teammates screamed their names, everyone oblivious to the falling sheets of rain above.

Which is when I started thinking, why as a society are we so obsessed with what's wrong with these kids?

Why aren't their test scores higher? Why do they misbehave? Why are they so disinterested, so hopeless, so dangerous? Whatever happened to the good 'ol days?

Well, I don't remember any good 'ol days. What I do recall is that the teen years are just as hard as any other phase of life. There will always be brainy kids, popular kids, lonely kids, troubled kids, athletic kids, etc. Things will always go wrong in their lives, and we will always be left to wonder why. The times change, but they never get any easier.

Watching these kids play around in the rain, I didn't see anything wrong with them, or why society is always suspicious and quick to condemn its youth.

Doing this job, it's hard not to envy the freedom these kids have. They have their whole lives ahead of them. But as a former teen myself, and not a very good one, I don't envy their problems.

But it was fun, at least, to act like a teenager once again.

Until the next morning, when I couldn't move my back.