Fountain of Spoof

So I'm feeling old and dried up like a prune. Partly it's my own fault for spending time at the pool, the summer nesting spot of teenagers looking nubile and a little bit pimply.

During the course of the rest of the year, I barely come in contact with teens: I have no idea what they do or where they live September to May. I guess they spend a lot of time at Abercrombie & Fitch or at the movie theater, either watching vampire flicks (girls) or action-thriller-fart films (boys). I''m assuming they also go to school and have part-time jobs in shops I can never afford to shop at.

Obviously I was a teenager at one time, in a proterozoic period in a distant galaxy, before the invention of cell phones. Talking of which, according to a recent study, if I want to be more like a teen, I shouldn't be using my phone for voice calls; instead, I should be pounding the teensy keys like a texting automaton, preferably blindfolded.

In an effort to avoid the onslaught of middle age, I've identified several changes I can make to my life to give me the appearance of being young and vibrant:

1. Drink Arnold Palmer Half and Half Iced Tea: don't mistake this for a lesser Red Bull - this 23 oz of iced tea/lemonade is like an elixir of youth, or at least I think so. Teen girls in the know knock this back like it's crack cocaine.

2. Slather up with Proactiv: yup, if I use products for spotty teenage skin, I can transform my increasingly creased dermis into skin like a spotty teenager. Again, fountain of youth stuff, right?

3. Refuse to watch anything on television. Screw the cinema-screen-surround-sound-home-theater experience, that's for oldsters. From now on, I'm only gonna watch viral videos on my blinged-out cellie.

4. Talk in Lady Gaga lyrics. I swear, I recently overheard a young buck at the snack bar chatting to the lady behind the counter using only Ke$ha and Lady Gaga songs. I am not joking about this. Snack bar chick replied in monosyllables, so I couldn't be sure if she was quoting Timbaland or just stupid.

5. stop using punctuation and capital letters thats just for people born before the internet and im all about social networking so there

6. Supersize my Facebook friends list. See 5 above for fuller explanation. It's actually better to know more people through Facebook than to actually, well, know those people in real life.

7. Wear Silly Bandz in an ironic way.

8. Buy a twin bed and pretend I live at home with my parents. I'll even make my husband pretend he's my boyfriend and have him sneak in the house to share my bed. He'll have to leave early in the morning before my "parents" catch him. As a trainee teenager, I know that I'll have to adjust my definition of "early morning" to mean around 10 AM.


That's my shortlist for now. If all goes well, I'll be starting twelfth grade in a week or two and I'll find out what teens do in the winter months.