A Rant: Mom of a Teenager

Riddle me this batman. How can a teenage boy sleep through an alarm clock that is alarming so loudly that I can hear it all the way downstairs across the house in my room with the door shut?  Also how can my son sleep through me yelling at him to wake up and turn the alarm off but when his text message notification on his smart phone goes off he jumps up like a jack in the box?  I cannot be the only mother that is perplexed by this seemingly selective hearing that teenagers seem to have.

I remember when my husband and I were dating and I would call him at work and they would say he had not come in yet and that he was late so if I heard from him would I please tell him to call them.  I would call his cell phone and he would not answer and then I would call his house phone and he still would not answer. After trying several times to reach him I would begin to worry. He only lived a few minutes from me so I would drive over to his house and there I would find him fast asleep with the alarm clock going off right next to his head, both phones in plain sight and drool coming out of the corner of his mouth while he slept soundly through it all. I would wake him up and he would startle much like our teenage son does today when his phone notifies him he has a message. Texting wasn’t an option during the archaic age of 1998 when my husband and I were dating so the only comparison I have is that my then boyfriend was excited to see me much like my son is today when his friends text him.

The room was dark and quiet and I was sleeping so well; that is something that is few and far between for me these days. The house was quiet I am assuming because I was sleeping and then out of nowhere like a firetruck blazing through a neighborhood I hear “err err err err err err err” repeating over and over and over again like a pounding headache that won’t go away. It was my teenage son’s alarm clock. I looked over at my door to see if I had left it open because the sound was so loud. The door was closed. I got up and put on my robe and walked out of my room to the bottom of the stairs. I yelled up the stairs, because I was too tired to climb them, at my son “ANDREW”! I did not hear a response. I unsuccessfully attempted to yell his name up the stairs several more times before I hung my head in defeat and climbed the mountainous stairs of wood to find my son sound asleep. There he was just lying there looking just like his father did 17 years prior as the alarm with its flashing red numbers yelled at him to wake up and get ready for school. He looked so peaceful and sweet so I did what any good mom would do; I yelled his name as loud as I could and he startled like my chickens do when the dog chases them around the yard. His arms and legs flew every which way, covers flying and eyes that looked like they would pop out of his head. My work was done. I calmly said “it is time to get up for school”.

There have been many other times my son has slept through loud noises, like vacuuming, his brother and sister running down the hallway like elephants during a stampede or the house phone ringing and I call from an indisposed location “can you get that” only to come out and find him crashed on the sofa taking one of his many daily naps. But then out of nowhere he gets a text message on his phone from 10 feet away and the subtle vibration from the notification wakes him up and he runs to it like I would a million dollars. I watch in awe at this mystery as I journal my thoughts and collected data on the mysteries of teenagers and their selective deafness while asleep.

I would like to know if there has been a scientific study done on this confounded behavior.  At first I thought it was selective hearing. This is what I call my son’s hearing when I ask him to do the dishes, or put the laundry away or take the trash out. This usually happens on the weekends when I am leaving the house to take care of some errands and I call a powwow before I go. I will ask each of my three children to do some sort of chore while I am gone and then we I get back and the chores have not been completed the response from my darlings is always the same “I didn’t hear you”.  “You didn’t hear me” I always respond with a very high pitched questioning voice. “I sat all three of you down and looked you square in the eyes and told you my expectations and then made you repeat them. How can you repeat something you did not hear” I ask astonished.  The looks on their faces is priceless; I really should take a picture someday to Kodak the moment. My teenager is smart though. He will do something on his chore list so it looks like he was listening but he won’t do all of it so he can say and make it look believable “I didn’t hear you say that”.  I fell for it for a while but I have got on to his subtle giveaways of deterring me from the truth. The corners of his mouth will slightly bend, he looks away and will not make eye contact or he bounces on his toes. I digress. The thing is the actual hearing. How can he not hear his alarm clock going off right next to his head?

I think this will remain an unsolved mystery in the world of teenagers. I likened it to how can you remember every level you ever built on Minecraft but can’t remember you have a history test. How do you know every power of every character of every video game you have ever played but cannot remember to do your homework?  How can you NOT hear your alarm clock that is right next to your head and is going off with the volume turned all the way up? Just how?