January 13, 2006

Teenage New Year’s Resolutions

By Arianna Trujillo-Robnett
Times Intern

One question: why do we even bother?

At the age of 16, your pledge to maintain your room clean enough that The Smell doesn’t return will be just about as valid now as it was the first ten times you said it.

But nevertheless, we do it: we pledge, we plead, we lie – we make New Year’s Resolutions.

We all swear that this time we will do what we say, or chop off our hands. Or, do laundry or something….

But, the question is why? Why do we torture ourselves with the idea that, we’ll actually be clean, before beating back the Mold Monster with a broom and deciding that it can wait another year.

A large portion of our problem is that we don’t have practical resolutions. Among teenagers, the top three pledges were:

1. To be more organized.

2. To be nicer to people.
And of course:

3. To get back into shape.

It’s never going to happen, and we know because we’ve tried before and have all failed quite fantastically at it.

I guarantee you, by the time this article is published, every single pledge that Americans made to themselves at the stroke of midnight will have been broken. But it’s a gradual process, full of lies and denial – it’s known as The Breakdown.

A small thing normally triggers your downfall; let’s say your resolutions are to get in shape and to be more organized. What leads to your destruction is probably the most amazing (and disgusting) thing imaginable: a triple scoop Rocky Road and cherry Sundae covered in whipped cream, icing, pretzels and deep fried in McDonald’s French fry grease that’s crying out to you like a siren to a sailor.

“No,” you cry out, “I am strong. I will resist. But, I’m really hungry, so, maybe just one.”

So you do it. You break your word. But it’s only for right now, that one little slip; so, you wipe your face clean and resume your sit-ups. “It’s okay,” you think, “I can recover from this.”

And then you say it: Just once more. I mean well, and I know I can do it. So we do, we try and we work out and use that Trapper Keeper our moms bought us in sixth grade and say, “It’s compromise.”

Until you stop your sit-ups and your obsession with color coding and put down your highlighter and relish in being the veritable model of discipline. And you even indulged a couple of times too, but you still look good – you foiled temptation – you are a god.

Then you feel that pain in your stomach, and remind yourself that even a god deserves a break, some fun, every once and a while. But wait, don’t you have a race in a week, more papers that have yet to be graced by your eyes?

It can wait.

So it does and that sweet addiction known as procrastination makes it way back into your system and the delirium sets in – as does the laziness.

It’s all relative. We all do it and it may just be genetics that teens are more prone to fickleness then the rest of the humane population.

So is there really a point to it? Possibly, if for nothing else then to prove that we can.

But, to my contemporaries, good luck with your resolutions, and if you manage to keep, more power to you. Otherwise, say “hi” to your Mold Monster for me.