Thank you very much. And as punishment for offering such cliched, trite bits of wisdom, I hereby sentence you to spend the next week locked in a bathroom with my two young daughters.

I personally feel that people spout off information like this because their memories are fading and it's practically impossible for them to remember all the way back to the equally-difficult pre-teen years. For example, if you relate a story about something insane your 3-year-old has just done, these people never say, "Just wait until she's 4."

It's always "Welllllll, you think THAT'S bad, … just wait until she's a teenager."

I have been assured by one of these nimble-minded cynics, though, that it's not fading memory that causes these words of warning, but rather the desire to, "Share the agony with anyone and everyone who will one day be the parent of a teenager."

It's as though parents who have survived their children's teenage years have banded together to form some sort of giant post-traumatic, latent teen stress support group whose primary goal is wreaking havoc, doom and general gloom on the parents of younger children.

Our presently peaceful house will contain two teenage girls for a three-year period shortly after the beginning of the third millennium. That's the good news. The not-so-good news is that when you combine all three of our children, we will have at least one teenager in the house for an unbearably long period of 14 years, between 1999-2113. Don't ask me to explain how I arrived at this number -- I assure you it took some pretty tricky calculations on a sticky note for me to figure it all out.

The 14-year teenage period in our house is the very minimum, of course. If we are forced to hold any of our children back a year for flunking courses like "Loading/Unloading the Dishwasher 101," or "How Not To Talk Back to Your Parents During the Otherwise Sullen and Nasty 13-17 Years", we may be looking at a couple of decades of teenagers in the house. Lucky us.

It was only a couple of weeks ago when it first dawned on my wife and me just how difficult the teen years may be in our house. One day, I walked past the door of our daughters' bathroom. I looked in and observed both of them standing bent over at the waist, their upper torsos parallel to the floor. Both of them had a brush clasped in their right hand and they were brushing their hair from the roots up. I just stood there for a moment, paralyzed by fear at what undoubtedly lie ahead. I felt a sudden urge to contact my employee assistance program's mental health hotline.

"Hello, mental health hotline?" I asked.

"Good afternoon," the pleasant voice on the other end said.

"I really need some hel -- "

"If you're using a touch tone phone, press 1 now."

So I press 1.

"My two daughters. They're in the bathroom, and -- "

"Your call may be monitored to ensure quality service."

"My children, they're in the bathroom. You have to help me. Before it's too late!" Before 1999 when it WILL be too late!"

"If you would like to hear this message in Spanish, press 1; en Espanol, press dos."

"Look, you don't understand," I pleaded. "I've got two small female children in the bathroom, and -- "

The voice on the other end interrupted me again and said, "Good afternoon, please enter your social security number, your personal identification number, your account number, your birth date, your marital status, the last time you had your tires rotated, the age and whereabouts of your first born and the nature of your phone call in 10 words or less."

"Look," I said calmly. "I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS! What I do have is two young daughters in the bathroom. They've been in there for hours and both of them are bent over at the waist brushing their hair from the roots up. This is a serious problem! Please help me. NOW! Before I GO CRAZZZZYYYY!!!!!"

"Ha!" A woman on the other end suddenly interrupted. "You think it's bad now, just wait until they're teenagers."

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