Southwest Kansas Register

When I was in my teens, my buddies and I hung out at the Westminster Mall northwest of Denver. Each Friday night we’d venture out hoping to find some cute girls to flirt with. Deep down we knew that meeting girls was the stuff of myth, and we’d invariably end up playing Dig-Dug and Defender for several hours before rounding out the evening at Taco Bell.

This memory cropped up a few weeks ago while I was meandering through the food court at a mall in Hutchinson. It was a Saturday evening and teenagers were everywhere. I saw the cool guys with their pants tugged stylishly down in defiance of all the laws of gravity; a chain holding a billfold with their $20 allowances; an I-just-woke-up haircut completing the picture.

I saw the cool girls with their mini-skirts and thick make-up – always a group of three, at least one set of eyes focused secretively on the cool guy like a spy peering over a newspaper. Meanwhile, the cool guy artfully pretended he couldn’t care less.

And then I saw the other guys – the guys who looked like a puzzle piece that just didn’t fit — and in them I saw myself 20-some years ago. I saw my hair that would never feather like the cool guys’ hair, instead hanging straight down as if I had been wearing a stocking cap all day. I could see my shrink-to-fit Levi’s, which everyone wore back then, girl or boy, cool or no. Despite how many times I washed them, mine were always stiff and dark blue, while all the cool guys’ were faded to that perfect blue/gray hue.

I saw my face full of pimples; I always seemed to have at least one Mount Olympus sized zit right on the side of my nose. I remember feeling like a human medical experiment gone awry, or like a creature from a horror movie: the girl walks into her room and suddenly the closet door swings open – "AAAAAHHHHHGGGG!! IT’S THE ZIT FROM THE BEYOND!!"

I saw all my anxieties and insecurities. I saw the pain of becoming attracted to a girl so cute that she must live on a higher plane of existence, one I could only reach by either finding a jeannie or getting bitten by a radioactive spider and becoming a super-hero.

Knowing as I left the mall all those years ago that neither of these would probably occur, it made that burrito taste all the better. Girls have chocolate, boys have Taco Bell. And Burger King. And Count Chocula.

I was remembering all these things that evening in Hutchinson when it suddenly dawned on me: I’m really very thankful to be 40. As I felt this sense of gratitude I actually smiled a little. I felt thankful for every gray hair in my beard, for the spare tire around my waist, and for the bald areas creeping up the sides of my head like cranial erosion.

All that annoying teenage awkwardness was gone. I no longer cared that I wasn’t cool or that girls had actually shuddered when they caught me glancing at them. I didn’t care that I now dress like a thrift store mannequin, that I don’t walk or talk like the Prince of Wales, that I can’t tell you who the current prime-minister of Canada is, that I don’t speak French, that I can’t play the piano, that I’ve never balanced my check-book, and that I don’t know how to change my oil.

My teen years were a stew of fear and self-doubt, a time of trying desperately to discover what I was doing here and why God created me. I was introduced to God’s love on many occasions – on wonderful retreats at Camp St. Malo near Estes Park (the old, rustic Camp St. Malo, not the Mariott-like resort they converted it to more than a decade ago). During a reading class in the ninth grade I slowly paged through a miniature Old Testament I carried in my pocket -- finding hope, inspiration and guidance.

Despite having the guidance of God and my parents – which helped me in ways I’ll probably never know — there isn’t enough reassurance in the world to help a teenager quell those teenage blues. The only real cure, I think, is time. Today I can honestly say that I’m thankful to be 40; thankful to be far and away from those teenage blues.

Of course there still exist anxieties, but they’re more subdued. For instance, I worry that my column will someday get me fired. I worry about my house slowly tilting to the north, the funny noise my truck makes, the drought, fires, floods, shootings, stabbings, kidnappings, war, rabid dogs, gum disease, heart disease, getting something in my eye, paying the gas bill, typos. ...

I wonder if that little Bible would still fit in my back pocket?