The "benefits" of being a teenager
 |
| Nigel and Jared, waiting for the Blue Men to appear. |
Here are some of the "benefits" of being and having a teenager:
- They can go anywhere on their own – "Have EZlink Will Travel". We no longer have to worry about fetching him around, picking him up. As long as there is a bus-stop or MRT station around, he’ll find his own way home. Luckily we live in a city with very low crime rates and a bus-stop is just conveniently located right outside our estate. But sometimes, picking him up is still so much faster - see the last point about sleeping late.
- He finds his own lunch in school. There’s something about children between the ages of 7 and 12 where they apparently get hungry, but are not really motivated enough to do anything about it. Once you hit thirteen, you get hungry more and it suddenly occurs to you that food can be purchased in order to kill that hunger pangs. Also, this means we don't have to wait for him to have our lunch on weekdays.
- The pocket money rocks – he gets a boatload of money (for his age) and still manages occasionally to rip his grandparents off by convincing them to give him a couple of extra bucks. It helps that he is so skinny and looks undernourished.
- He has his own smartphone and a data plan. Like all teenagers, he appears to be addicted to it and tends to take it out of his pocket whenever he gets a chance. That’s when he has to immediately put it back into his pocket or risk getting it confiscated.
- He gets to sleep really late (11pm+) almost every night – but then again, this is due to the amount of homework he gets coupled with a very unproductive approach to doing his work. One only wonders he he will survive in the corporate world.