Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Even Think About It

by
Frank Mullen III

You've given your teenager the facts about drug abuse. You've discussed it openly and respectfully, and she knows she can talk to you at any time, without fear of condemnation.

Congratulations. Your child has just awarded you a level of trust that will endure for, oh, maybe four minutes. That's how long it will be before Kirsten gets it through her peabrain that she missed something big and comes bouncing back into the living room with The Question:

"Sooo, did you use drugs when you were young?"

Welcome to the Voyage Of The Damned. On behalf of all parents who have already made this trek with their teenaged children, let me warn you of an ill-informed school of drug education that recommends you admit your youthful mistakes to your inquiring progeny. 'Be honest with your child,' the thinking goes, 'and you'll have a friend for life.'

The drug czar who thought this up needs to spend a few years in a re-education camp. We don't want our kids to grow up to be our friends. We want them to grow up to be people who visit us in the nursing home and empty the colostomy bag when the orderlies are off taking a cigarette break. If you want friends, join the Elks; I want someone whoâll say, 'Roll over, Dad, I can't reach
the catheter.'

'So, Frank,' you ask, 'are you saying I should fudge the truth when I talk to my children?' Not at all. Don't hedge in the slightest. To the contrary, be totally dishonest. Lie! Deny everything! The point of parent-child discussions is not to make your kids see you as an imperfect human being; the goal is to make them so uncomfortable that they'll never raise the subject again. Have you forgotten the lessons we learned from our own parents?

Our parents avoided touchy issues through the use of the greatest of all evasion techniques, Negative Nostalgia. The moment Mom or Dad introduced the phrase 'When I Was Your Age' into the dialogue, you knew it was time to turn around and flee. Dangerous tales of growing up during the Depression were lurking ahead, dark dramas featuring part-time jobs, taking in boarders and sharing a bedroom with Aunt Catherine.

Negative Nostalgia is still an effective weapon, needing only a bit of oiling to bring it up to date for a new generation of victims. The secret is to blather incessantly and repetitively, treating the child as a whining incompetent whose opinions are laughable, and whose problems are trifling inconveniences in comparison to the monumental hardships you endured.

Rant! Admonish! When your audience finally storms out of the room, you'll know you have succeeded in creating an exciting new conversational taboo. Use Negative Nostalgia as shown below, and your next heart-to-heart talk with your teenager is sure to be your last.

Drugs? Did I use drugs? Young man, when I was your age, we didn't take drugs to avoid reality, and our reality was tough. We didnât have stereo, much less surround-sound. We listened to "Surfin' Safari" in mono, Buster, but it didn't make us snort cocaine.

If the child is dense enough to still be in the room with you, proceed without pause.

We didn't use drugs, so we didn't have all this modern 'drug awareness,' 'drug testing' and 'drug-sniffing dogs.' In my day, dogs sniffed what God intended them to sniff: each other's butts. And speaking of butts...

'And speaking of' is the tipoff that The Escalation is about to begin. You are now abandoning your narrow theme, broadening your focus to include any random teenage character-flaw that may come to mind. The foolish child who stays in the kill-zone after this point deserves what he gets.

...we didn't sit around on our butts, flicking the remote on the TV. If you wanted to change the channel, dammit, you leaned over and slapped your little brother until he got up and did it for you. We didn't have personal CD players with headphones. A family shared a record player, and when you listened to Bobby Vinton, everybody listened to Bobby Vinton, whether they liked it or not. And they didn't like it, so they paid you back. It was war! When it was your parents' turn, they put on "Sing Along with Mitch Miller" and sang "Bye Bye, Blues" with the record. I hated it! We were teenagers, we hated everything, but that didn't mean we had to engage in premarital sex and substance abuse, and you have the nerve to ask if I used drugs? Young man, when I was your age, we didn't...

You have now looped back to the beginning, but it doesn't matter, because you're only talking to yourself now. Your teen has fled, and will never bring up the subject again. Celebrate the moment with a drink and some relaxing music. How about "Leslie Gore's Greatest Hits"? You'll like it--it's in mono.

Copyright 2004, Frank Mullen IIII.
Originally published by Suite101.com.
Frank Mullen III is Suite101's Baby Boomer
Humor Contributing Editor.