Teenagers

The teenagers below my apartment are too brightly colored. The average fashionable teenager these days wears floral prints with skinny belts, but these teenagers seem stuck in the days when Avril Lavigne was dating a guy from Sum 41. Those were my teenage days, kids. Get with the times.

I blame Lady Gaga, the self-proclaimed Monster who probably hides under the beds of floral-print lovers and threatens them with nightmares of sequined turquoise pants and blond n’ black streaked bangs.

The brightly colored teenagers loiter around our street thanks to the Craze, an arcade and laser tag hang out that also provides cheap pizza and mini golf with an entrance not a foot away from our apartment entrance.

I’m not sure what our apartment is called. It’s most often referred to by its address, 30 College Avenue, but I make my rent checks out to Ferrin Square, as the landlords are Julie and Keith Ferrin. For a short time I believe the apartments were called Ferrin Heights, since a shield bearing an “FH” insignia decorates our door entrance.

Before being named “The Craze,” the managers at the time were our close friends asking for name suggestions for their new brightly colored teenager attracting entertainment venue. Seve suggested “FERRINHEIGHT 451,” which I encouraged by suggesting the innards of the building being painted with murals of pterodactyl-like books set aflame and fluttering around a post-apocalyptic setting of Rexburg.

But this particular brand of teenager would likely never get the reference as they’re too busy squeezing into magenta cutoffs and wearing oversized lime beanies, and if they bother to read books at all they’re probably relating to literary whiny teen Holden Caulfield. Whose favorite hat was, I distinctly recall, a bright shade of red.