Dear Teenager,
I used to be a lot like you. I still am in some ways. What happened to change my, "Yes, Mom, I know," attitude was a car accident that totaled my car (totally my fault). Harsh.
The thing is that we, as the typical independent college student, often don't realize that we get lucky a lot. Lucky meaning, those moments when we consider how bad something could have been, or the moments where we sit there and think about the terrible outcomes of our decisions that thankfully didn't happen because of some split-second decision to take the road less traveled by. It has happened to me more often than I had once believed, and when I didn't get so lucky, well, "I told you so" is an understatement.
If your parents are like mine, then this will hit right home. I grew up being lectured about virtually everything and anything they could see as a hazard to me. I either a) thought to myself, "Well what do they know, they aren't like me, I know this stuff already," or b) said, "Well duh, I'm not stupid!" Half the time, I actually WAS stupid for thinking this. We, as young people of course do not have the experience that our parents have. How could we? We're half their age, not even in college yet, haven't left home for any amount of time on our own, and yet we believe deep down that we could possibly know more than the people who brought us into this world.
However, our logic totally makes sense right?
In the coming months before our parents were to send us off on the adventure called college, they ranted about being safe at night, taught us to keep the food in our rooms sacred and explained the importance of staying true to the balancing act of the three S's (school, sleep, and social), even when it seemed impossible to keep it all in order. We held on to a lot of what they said going into that first year, or at least we thought we did.
But I'm here to tell you that I'm a prime example of taking advice and concern in one ear and letting it just as easily go out the other. "Don't let anything distract you in your car," is what my parents always told me. So when I totaled my car for that exact reason, I heard those little voices saying, "I told you so." But if you were wondering whether texting almost killed me, it wasn't, all I did was reach over to grab something. Distracting myself even after hearing what my parents had to say.
I got lucky. I thought I listened, though it turned out I actually thought I knew it all already. So this letter is dedicated to you, the teenager who knows it all, because I promise, you don't.
So I guess what I'm trying to tell you is that we don't know everything---unless you happen to be some sort of genius that literally knows everything. The important thing to remember is that we are young, and while we don't know everything, we have the ability to learn from our achievements and our mistakes. But here's my warning, don't go about it everyday like you don't need to learn something new or listen.
Sincerely,
The Girl with the Back Brace
