Why are you so rude to us?

Little ones, they grow taller, lankier, weirder. Their faces break open, hair all over, hair on chins and on hands. You hear your son speak and he doesn't speak like your little boy anymore. He speaks like he swallowed an adult. Teenagers- they steal around you. like a boat around a rocky outcrop, opening doors, moving silently from room to room like ghosts, like mist under a door. Almost like they don't live here anymore. They don't belong. They become different people. People who don't like you, suddenly you are the guy they feel awkward around. Then the music, weird music that spears through walls as if it's made from laser. Music that goes with clothes, which now look incompressible. The pants that sweep the floor, things that hang all over the place, the eyeliners that are too pronounced. The piercings on body parts, shoes that look like boats.


 And the walk, what's up with that walk?  They never walked like that before, who tempered with their center of gravity? Because they say so much wit their mannerisms, clothing and music, they have nothing left to say with their mouths. At least not to you, you seem to make them sulky, you can't ask questions that doesn't seem intrusive. You can't touch their phones, their stuff, or walk into their rooms without knocking, i don't know, you could get shot accidentally. They seems to spend more time brooding and whey they say hello, it's always a mumbled word if you are lucky, or a nod. You get nod many time, as if you're their homie.

Their friends are just a mirror of who they have become, they come over, bony shoulders poking through their T-shirts, caps covering half of their faces, chewing gum. They shake your hand without looking at you. Then they vanish to their room, door closing firmly behind them. Then you hear laughter and surprises and saddens you. You are surprised that they are still capable of laughter like humans, saddened that they can never laugh near you anymore. At least not with  that level of pleasure.
These aren't the children you raised, these gnomes living in a parallel universe under your roof. They have become stranger right before your eyes that's what happened. Stranger, Dr James Dobson, you know him right? That guy who comes on TV and breaks down family stuff for you. He says you have to step back and let it run it's course. That they will come round, they are confused with what's going on as much as you are. But when, Dobson, when? You have been reduced to that guy who asks his wife to decode what's going on: is he OK?

Every parents wonder at a point during the growth of their wards, but its nothing serious if you train them well in the way the should go in life so they can give you rest and best when you're old enough and needs their support physically, materially and emotionally.