I live a few blocks from one of the high schools in my town.  Last week I went to run an errand during the high school lunch hour.  In front of me was a scooter with 3 teenage boys on it.  Of course none of them were wearing helmets.  As I followed them down the hill many thoughts went through my mind.  First was, “Man, teenagers can be so stupid.”  Shortly after that I thought of my boys and the fact that they will someday be teenagers.  They’ll do stupid things too.  I hope they survive.

Last, I thought of myself as a teenager and some of the stupid stuff I did.  There was one time when we squished 12 people into my sisters Ford Escort after the Homecoming Parade.  We had to get the whole soccer team back to the school somehow.  Another time I went to a party where people were boxing.  I boxed a friend of mine.  Of course the only gear we had were boxing gloves.  (Yes, I did win.)

Then once when I was in college we were going on a field trip for my mountain biking class.  We were riding in my friends Geo Tracker and it was snowing really hard.  One of the windshield wipers was caked with snow so it wasn’t working well.  We were driving down the freeway and didn’t want to stop.  My friend, who was driving, leaned her whole upper body out her window to clean off the windshield wiper while the tall boy with long legs who was sitting in the passenger seat steered the car and pushed the gas peddle with his long left leg over the middle console.

Then there was the time I kissed a 21 year old drunk Canadian in Moab.

This is just a few of the stupid things I did.

Suddenly I wasn’t so judgmental of the three teenagers on the scooter.  I’m sure I would’ve done it too.