Quote of the Week...from Stephen King

If you liked being a teenager, there's something really wrong with you.           ...Stephen King

Being a major fan of Stephen King's writings, I also follow him on Twitter...often he gives good reading recommendations in his posts.  The above quote was from a list provided on a website...I'm not sure whether it's from a book of his or his own standalone quote.  That I agree with it is the reason for this article. There's a good reason for the existence of the term "teenage angst": going through this transformative life stage carries with it many opportunities for emotional difficulties as the body develops from childhood to being an adult and society in so many ways places pressure and stress on the young person who for the most part is simply trying to get along in life and fit in with his or her peers.  Bruce Springsteen may think of that time as "glory days"...and to be sure there are glorious, positive moments embedded within those years...but for me life was nothing like that back then.  Without going off on a rant about what a pathetic victim I was and how badly others treated me...yeah, like you want to hear all that...let me just say that it wasn't the fun kind of experience I would want to relive.  Teens are struggling enough with the monumental changes going on in their bodies as they grow from childhood to adults without, on one hand, being restricted as minors by their parents and other authority figures and, on the other, having to worry and be held accountable like adults when it comes to their academic records and futures in college and business.  The full development of the human brain, it has been discovered, isn't complete until around age 25...and it's areas like judgment and discernment that are part of that later growth stage to full maturity. I've written before that by the time I was eighteen I felt like an old man...the supreme irony, and a very good sign for those undergoing those "teenage angst" years as I did, is that I haven't felt that way for many years...even though I'm turning 64 next month.  I used to feel at the time that my teenage experiences were uniquely awful and felt a kind of shame about them, but after the many ensuing decades of hearing others' stories, reading, and watching movies and television, I feel instead like I'm more a part of the suffering-yet-enduring masses of teen-year survivors: a kind of fellowship in itself...