"I Am a Teenage Grandpa"

By Jerry Zezima

If you think your kids grow up fast, wait until you have grandchildren. I didn’t have to wait long for this revelation because my oldest grandchild is already a teenager.

If that weren’t enough, she and my four other grandkids are more mature than I am. It was true not only when I was their age — the youngest are 6-year-old twins — but, at 72, right now.

Thus have I discovered the fountain of youth: Immaturity. If you want to stay young, don’t grow up.

This means everyone else is getting old except me. That goes for my two daughters, the mothers of my grandchildren.

Every time you turn around, there’s another milestone, which is better than another kidney stone. I’ve had half a dozen of them.

My advice: Don’t turn around. And watch where you’re going.

But back to Lucky 13. I remember when I hit this landmark. At that age, only three things were important to me:

1) Sports.

2) Girls.

3) The Three Stooges.

Not necessarily in that order.

The day I became a teenager, my parents asked how I felt.

“I don’t feel any different,” I said, adding (to myself) that I was still the same dweeb I was the day before.

Then I went outside and threw snowballs (my birthday is in January) at cars.

Because I was the youngest kid in my class — the only time in my life that I had any class — I was 13 when I started high school.

On my first day, I got hopelessly lost, walking into the wrong classrooms and earning the snickers of the cool kids.

Every kid is teased — some, unfortunately, are bullied — in their teenage years. I found a way out of it: I was funnier than the other kids, who focused their jeers on my admittedly sizable proboscis.

My response: “My nose was this size when I was born. I couldn’t lift my head until I was 3 years old.”

It got big laughs. And it stopped the teasing. As a result, I became the class clown. It is an honor I wear proudly to this day.

I did a lot of dumb stuff when I was a teenager. Of course, I was young and stupid. I’m still doing a lot of dumb stuff, which means I’m now old and stupid. And because I’m a humor columnist, I’m actually getting paid for it.

Maybe I’m not so stupid after all.

I also was a teenager when I started college. I should have sued the people who made “National Lampoon’s Animal House,” the 1978 frat comedy starring John Belushi, for theft of intellectual property. If I won, I’d have to pay intellectual property tax.

That I graduated magna cum lager will give you some idea of my collegiate career.

As with my teachers in high school, where I was in the principal’s office so often that I could have been charged rent, my college professors couldn’t wait to get rid of me.

By then I was 21, my teenage years behind me, at least from the neck down. From the neck up, I continue to have the mind of a class clown.

My wife, Sue, who was my classmate in both high school and college, will verify it.

Now we have a teenage grandchild. It might make other grandparents feel old, but I have felt — for, ironically, the past 13 years — that you have to be young to be a grandparent. If you aren’t, being a grandparent will make you young again.

This explains why I have always been my grandchildren’s favorite toy.

So happy 13th birthday to my granddaughter, with lots of love from one teenager to another.

Copyright 2026 by Jerry Zezima