The Young and Untrusted_ **C** onversing a teenager is like talking to a teenager inside a time capsule. They seem to be totally immersed in their own past, uninterested in the present, and often, in a matter of minutes, they'll be totally out of touch with whatever it was you're talking about. They don't seem to know or care that the world around them is changing by the hour. They just stand there and laugh while you try to explain what happened yesterday. Not all teens behave this way. Most aren't so ignorant or naïve. Many have lived in the world and experienced it at least enough to take an intelligent interest in what's happening to their world and them. But in their heads, a teenager's still a teenager. As long as a teenager can hide from the world around her, it makes life much easier for her. She can wallow in self-pity, or blame everyone else for her troubles, or keep busy building her own self-esteem, or wallow in self-pity in self-esteem. She can bury herself in a computer, watch a little TV, listen to music, and go through the motions of high school. Or she can try to connect with the world by reading books, studying the people around her, talking to her friends, or writing in her journal. A teenager who has her own mind and can read and write is a rare bird indeed. A good reading attitude is something most teens will simply try to avoid. But some are lucky enough to have one or two wise, well-read teens around them. Unfortunately, those two or three are few and far between. And no one can tell you what it's like to have a wise and well-read teenager. A smart teen is a rarity, period. The teenagers who do fit that description are rare birds indeed, and you can tell. Those who are wise are not always easy to like. They don't talk down to people, but they're not too impressed by many of the things that impress most teenagers. They don't put others on a pedestal, but they will stand up for themselves when they see that they're being exploited by someone with a higher status. They'll challenge your ideas if they see that you're wrong. And they'll challenge your beliefs if they know that they're unfair. A wise teen doesn't try to change the world, but she does think for herself and make her own way in it. You may think that talking to a wise teen would be one of the most boring experiences in the world, but it isn't. It's just as interesting as talking to any other human being. It may be more interesting, because teens have lots of questions, want answers to lots of questions, are really open and eager to learn, and have a tendency to start arguments. But if you know how to make the best of a conversation with a wise teen, you'll enjoy it a lot more than most people do. I'll be talking with my youngest son for the next hour, and there's no doubt in my mind that he'll have the right things to say. He's intelligent and well read. He's seen and experienced a good deal of the world. He's got plenty to say. If you'd like to join us, come on in, sit down, and let's talk. What I really wanted him to say was that he was bored, restless, and needed a little change in his life, because if he really wanted to think and talk to someone who could open up his mind and make his eyes grow wide, all he had to do was let his imagination run free. What I got instead was: "It's so weird." "What do you mean?" "I mean, it's so weird that you're writing a book called _Teen Tough_." It was an expression of bewilderment—a kind of "How can that be?" He may be nineteen, but in many ways he's still about fifteen years old. He's still thinking about boys and girls and what he wants to do with his life, and all that. I said, "I don't know, it's just weird. Why's it weird?" "I don't know, but I've been thinking about all of that stuff and the questions you're asking me, and I really wanted to find out a lot more about it than I've ever gotten, you know?" "I know. What's happening?" "You know I don't know a lot. I haven't had time to learn anything much." "You've never been busy." "You're always busy." "Yes, I've been busy, but I've always found time to read." "But the books you read are so old. They were written in the 1800s." "They were written in the 1800s, but they're not old now. In fact, they're as interesting as anything that's been written in the last twenty years." "Not to me. They're old." "Well, I'll bet _you'd_ be bored reading anything more recent than, say, the _New York Times_." "I don't know, I wouldn't be bored. I read the newspapers, anyway. I like to see what's happening." "And you're reading _Time_ magazine." "Sure, and the _Wall Street Journal_." "And a couple of other newspapers, too." "Of course I read the newspaper. I want to know what's going on in the world." "I don't. I just want to know what's going on in _my_ world." "That's because you're always inside your head." "Sometimes I don't think I should be." I said, "Well, no matter how much I try to tell you otherwise, you're not going to have a lot of friends unless you take a real interest in the world and what's happening to it." "That's funny, because I have friends." "You do, but none of them are the kind of friends you could call wise. And smart." "I guess you could." "So it's important that you study the news." "No, not the news. It's important that I get out and do things. See people. Be with people. I don't want to be in my room all day watching the news." "But a wise teen would do all those things." "Yeah. But who's the wise teen? You?" "I'm always interested in reading and getting together with people, doing things." "What does that make me?" "A lucky idiot." "Can I be an idiot?" "Sure, if you want to." "Don't call me a 'wise' idiot. That's funny. I think I'm starting to get a headache." "You don't have to get headaches. Just learn some new words, watch the news, and talk to your friends." "I don't want to. I just want to stay home. Read." "Now it's me who's being wise. But I'll tell you what you ought to do." "What?" "Spend the day with a wise teenager. Get a book from your school library, read a couple of books, go to the news store and pick up the newspapers, and spend the day looking up the answers to all the questions you'd ask the wise teen if she was here." "Are you listening?" "I'm thinking about it." "Well, I could do that, but I'd feel pretty lonely. And it wouldn't be fun, because I wouldn't know where to go or what to do with myself. I just want to stay home and read." "There's a lot you can do at home." "Like what? You don't know much more than I do about what I could do. All you know is that I could read." "You could go online. There's chat rooms, e-mail, and the Internet." "Yeah, but it takes me a long time to find a topic to talk about. All I do is chat with kids, and then I can't tell them what I want to talk about. Or I'll start reading the news, and I'm not interested in what's happening right now. I'm interested in reading the news from twenty years ago. So I stop being interested in the news and waste my time reading stupid books." "Well, you can always look at the books on the shelf. You can read a little of everything and everything that's a book. And why not do a little homework?" "You mean do something that I really want to do." "Yeah, what I mean." "I don't know, I guess I could do that." "You're a smart kid. You can always find something to read or do." "But why should I have to read stuff that's a hundred years old? You've never been interested in what's happening now. Or what's happening in the last twenty years." "Who knows why? It's all in your mind. If you want to stay out of trouble and keep doing well in school, it's important that you know about what's happening in the