Teenager's Guide to the Real World

I'm not a teen anymore (thank God), but the whole dynamic of teen relationships still fascinates me. I was playing with Google last night (yes, searching for my name; I'm #5 for "Michael Williams" (no quotes) which isn't too bad!) and I came across the absolutely priceless Teenager's Guide to the Real World... Online!. (Yes, the ! is part of the title, so the sentence gets to end with its own period. More on that later.)

It's full to the rim with Brim with wisdom for teenagers -- and some of it's pretty good! Let's take Chapter 3: Adults Rule the World.

From this graph you can see that there are twice as many children as there are teenagers. There are seven times as many adults as there are teenagers. In other words, if a UFO flew over the earth tomorrow and beamed up all of the teenagers, the world would hardly notice. In the grand scheme of things, teenagers are insignificant. ...

By sheer force of numbers adults rule the world. But there is another thing that causes adults to be in control: they own everything. They own all of the cars. They own all of the houses and apartment complexes. They own all of the businesses and skyscrapers. They own the government. They own all of the forests and weapons. They own it all.

These are very interesting facts, and they have interesting implications. You need to learn and understand one thing from them: Adults are in charge. There is nothing you can do to change this situation.

Ok, I got a bit distracted there. The point of this post was that for some reason Google pointed me to Chapter 10: Relationships are Random.

- Why do girls hate me?
- Why do I feel so awkward around girls?
- Why does it seem like a lot of people don’t have these problems? Why does it seem like they are able to walk up to girls, talk to them, and the next minute they are going out together and having a really great time? Why are a lot of those people athletes?
- Why are pretty girls like they are?
- Why do a lot of girls seem attracted to guys who are obviously idiots and who treat them bad? I would treat a girl great, but that seems to make no difference. Why?

So we need to talk about relationships and the facts of life around them. Unfortunately, I have some bad news: the relationship part of being a teenager is totally random. As random as lottery numbers and rolling dice. It turns out there are no rules. That is a fact of life. The quicker you learn it and accept it the better.

I don't think this changes once you're an adult. Looking back, it's bizarre to consider some of the girls I've liked and the girls who have liked me.