Teen-age behavior can teach us a wealth of knowledge

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I came across a list of thought-provoking things people have learned from children.Including:-- A king-size waterbed holds enough water to fill a 2,000-square-foot house 4 inches deep.-- You should not throw baseballs up when the ceiling fan is on.-- VCRs do not eject sandwiches.I am familiar with this kind of knowledge, having helped raise three children.However, now that mine are older, I've begun to gather wisdom from the behavior of a more advanced age level.Today, I'd like to offer some of it for your consideration.Things I've learned from having teen-agers:-- A can of Coke left in a freezer explodes everywhere, and then refreezes.-- The part of the bill reporting that your 16-year-old's cell phone sent and received 5,982 text messages last month is not a misprint.-- Lexan panes on garage doors stop hockey pucks better than glass.-- Similar to how the leg involuntarily kicks when a knee is tapped to check reflexes, patting a teen-age boy on the hair triggers the head to jerk away and the vocal chords to say, "Cut it out!"-- The upper 30 percent of underwear is now meant to be outerwear.-- When asking a teen-ager if he's finished a chore, the phrase "I'm about to" actually means, "I'm not about to."-- Oddly, boys able to bench-press 200 pounds are not strong enough to open a dishwasher door.-- A basketball may seem softer than wallboard, but it isn't.-- The word "swarm" does not just apply to locusts.-- Scientists speculate that locusts actually study groups of teen-age boys in kitchens in order to master the art of stripping cropland.-- Pool-table pockets can hold an astonishing number of discarded food wrappers.-- After 48 hours behind a couch, leftover mac-and-cheese is harder to scrape off a plate than concrete.-- Wet towels left together on a bedroom floor mate and multiply.-- It is uncool to have pants that fit.-- A refrigerator door left open overnight costs an average $172 in lost food.-- Cell phones have replaced doorbells.-- On weekends, the teen-age ear does not register the words "wake" and "up" until after 1 p.m.-- Spray-paint designs are hard to get off the interior walls of a garage.-- Eating a foot-long meatball sandwich from Subway at 3 p.m. does not preclude boys from asking, at 5 p.m., when dinner will be ready.-- If your remote control breaks, duct-taping two ski poles end-to-end will allow you to manually change channels without leaving the couch.-- When asking questions ranging from "Have you done your homework?" to "Would you like to come to a movie with me?," the response, "I'm all right," translates to, "No."-- The backseat floor of an automobile is able to hold empty cups and containers from over 23 McDonald's meals.-- No matter how athletically skilled you think your child is, it is not a good idea to put a backyard lacrosse net in front of an expensive picket fence.-- It is possible for a human being to sleep for 12 hours with his rear-end hanging unsupported between the chair and the ottoman.-- The closer a teen-ager's foot size approaches your own, the more frequently your shoes disappear.-- A felt-tip pen in a washing machine will mark every garment in the load at least seven times.-- Similarly, gum left in the pocket of a pair of pants placed in a dryer will free itself, become unwrapped, and adhere to the inner drum for several decades.--The phrase "The toilet doesn't work" means it is currently overflowing.-- Similarly, the phrase "It wasn't me" means "It was me."-- Caller ID greatly reduces the odds of a teen-ager answering when a parent is calling.-- Saturday-night plans for an 11 p.m. get-together are most frequently made between 10:52 p.m. and 10:58 p.m.-- A still-wrapped roll of Bounty paper towels can be easily thrown in a perfect spiral to a receiver catching it in mid-jump and landing back-first on the living-room couch.-- It is possible to live for a year or more out of a basement laundry hamper instead of a dresser.And finally:-- A wet cell phone cannot be successfully dried in a microwave oven.If I've missed any, please let me know.But I'm off now to make sure the refrigerator door is closed.(mpatinkin(at)projo.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)