TeenLove

No one keeps it greene like a teen. If you have the opportunity, I highly recommend you find some adolescents to hang out with. I'm not kidding! If you happen to be the parent of a teenager, you might think I'm nuts, and, indeed, it's often easier to hang out with a teen or a parent who is not your own.

Even moms and pops will have to agree that these no-longer-children-not-yet-adults are truly amazing creatures -- extremely idealistic, constantly in flux, highly emotional, sometimes cranky, often quite honest, and, very, very perceptive. In my case, I find continual inspiration in my much-young sister, Alice, who turns 16 in October. Check out the collage she made me:

It hangs on my bedroom wall and makes me remember the days when I had no choice but to let myself experiment, be messy, dream big, fret out-loud (quite often), contradict myself and fully assume that I had Broadway or Hollywood in my future. Alice had a blog before I did, but, she admits, "I was being really mean to my parents and my brother," so that privilege got the ixnay. (When she's paid her dues and gets back to posting, you'll be the first to know!)

In sum, nothing spells g-r-e-e-n-e like the musings of a teen. Simultaneously, nothing so ensures my acceptance of laugh lines, car payments, and truncated summer vacations as remembering the slings and arrows of outrageous adolescent fortunes. That's why I highly recommend you visit with some double-digit-under-twenties on the next possible occasion. Or, get out the scissors, the rubber cement, and some old magazines, and unleash your inner high schooler. May the results be a colorful, complicated, collage of humor, hopes, fears, fantasies and fun.