Biology, bacteria and teenage boys

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I learned in biology class that a key difference between living things and inanimate ones is that live things are highly organized. It's where the word "organism" comes from. Trees have rings and leaves have neat rows of cells. The higher up the ladder of life you go, the more it holds. Fish have scales, birds have aligned feathers. By contrast, minerals at microscopic level have no ordered pattern.It's one of few facts I remember from biology, and I've held onto it ever since. But I've discovered in the last few years that the textbooks need adjustment, because it turns out there is one living organism that is chaotically disorganized. The human teenager.I have three of them. Actually, I have closer to 10, which is the usual number at our home. Most are boys around age 16. This has given me a revealing view of the species. It's why I can credibly state that teens are less organized than even bacteria, whose proteins have logical formation.Teenage boys are not logical.The other day, for example, I told my elder son to wash his hands. He protested, saying he had done so the day before. I insisted, and afterwards, I asked why he wiped his hands on his pants instead of the paper towels."It's straight," he said. I think "It's straight" means, "Don't worry about it."Then there is the matter of hair brushes and combs. Archaeologists say people first employed them 5,000 years ago to get personally organized. The average teenage boy in 2008 has yet to evolve to such a high level. They use their hands as brushes, and only after being told, "Will you please do something about your hair."In pursuit of order, most human life forms take advantage of such concepts as "dressers," "drawers" and "shelves." Teenage boys do not. I am reminded of this every morning when my sons bound out of bed after their 11th wake-up call, the one with the added threat: "Get up now or I will take away your phone."They will then shuffle through the kitchen in their boxers to the basement to rummage through hampers for shirts, pants and socks. The other day, on his way back up, I asked my 16-year-old why he doesn't bring the hamper to his room and put clothes in drawers."It's straight," he said. Oh.It's extraordinary what you find in teen living spaces. We have a basement room that has an Xbox video-game console. Groups of boys routinely spend hours there in the near-dark, gripping controllers, playing Halo and eating double their body weight in Tostitos and Oreo Klondikes. I think they are genetically incapable of putting anything back. Like many parents, I try to not even look in the room for days. When I finally do, and after being revived, I order a clean-up, and have to remain present to give complex instructions, such as:"Do you think a half-drunk can of soda should just sit in the middle of the floor?""Oh, I didn't see that."Also: "Is there a reason a half-eaten bowl of mac-and-cheese is in the bathroom sink?""It wasn't me."I had hoped boys would grow out of this by their late teens, but I just visited my 21-year-old nephew at his college. He lives in an off-campus house with five other boys the same age. There was so much misplaced junk you literally had to wade through the place, as if in a swamp of laptops, ski boots, hoodies, Maxims and backpacks. It was a sty.I'd brought my 16-year-old son with me. I turned his way and gave him an appalled look.He looked back and said it was the coolest place he'd ever seen.Perhaps it's how God meant for boys to live. If so, all I can say is: It's straight.(Contact Mark Patinkin at mpatinkin(at)projo.com)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)