This rant is kind of special because it hits home with pretty much anybody my age. These days, any vandalism or graffiti down in town is usually blamed first on the indigenous teenage population. Older people in the community have stereotyped us to an unbelievable level. Now, I'm well aware of the fact that most stereotypes have some roots in truth. However, they take it too far. If we say something sarcastic that they don't like the say something to the affect of "Oh, you're being a teenager again." They make it sound like "teenager" is synonymous with "minion of Satan." Sometimes these people seem to forget that they were once minions of Satan. Parents will tell you to stay away from drugs and not drink and always do really well in school and all that happy horseshit. They, after all, grew up in the sixties and seventies. This, of course, was the golden age of our good friends Mary Jane and Snow White. It is true that we really should stay away from drugs and liquor because they have the capacity to destroy our ability to read and comprehend rants such as this one. And if you can't read these, then I have no reason to write them, now do I? So to continue my original discussion, our parents and some of our teachers are trying to turn us into (as my friend so delicately put it) system sluts. They want us to not think for ourselves and not use critical thought and skepticism. Though I commend them for doing what they should do most of the time (that is, guiding us into maturity and teaching us right from wrong so we don't end up as burned out potheads with no hope of an even moderately successful future), sometimes they try too hard and end up running us ragged with too many structure based activities. Though we do need to be given some structure and responsibility for our actions, we should still be allowed to be the kids we are. To be perfectly honest I believe the final lesson our parents give us is to not repeat whatever mistakes they made and to be good parents ourselves. So in the end, I can kind of understand where they're coming from, but sometimes they really need to look at the world from out perspective.