By BLAST BY SETH BARNES
I don’t have children. I’m not a teacher, and I stridently ignore the little people incessantly playing portable videogames in every public place imaginable. But I’ve just found out that I’m seriously in the dark about a modern phenomenon: I thought those little people were “kids.” Well buster, they’re not. Those are “Tweens,” the latest American sensation.
I might as well have been sailing across the world for the past few years in an exact replica of the Mayflower. I had no clue. Merrily, even cheerfully, I’ve gone about my business, thinking nothing was amiss. When I was a child, the system was pretty straightforward. If I asked my parents for something, anything, that was non-essential to my day-to-day survival, I received a stern lecture on frugality, was forced to execute 50 push-ups in rapid succession, and was sent off to sleep on a concrete slate to further consider the virtues of thrift. If you were a kid, you were supposed to be at least semi-miserable. You were the young goat of the human kingdom, and nobody was impressed. Why? Well nobody really knew why, that’s just the way they had been doing things for centuries. But it was OK, because eventually you graduated from the serfdom of little-people land and became an adult.
Somewhere along the line, the whole kiddie-cart as it were, was tipped over. All of a sudden adults became fascinated with kids who were too old to derive satisfaction from a clean game of Ring Around the Rosie (toddlers), but too young to have their first inkling that it might be fun to smoke a carton of cigarettes while making prank phone calls all afternoon (teenagers). Kids were no longer fantastically obnoxious twerps who were just a few years removed from soiling their pants on daily basis. A new classification emerged for this “between” group suspended in the purgatory of not-adult land. These runny-nosed adolescents, this selfish, narcissistic clan of tantrum throwing spoilsports and whiners had a new name: they were Tweens. Mini adults. While it would have been entirely excusable to leave this group of people alone until they had actually done something to warrant our attention, a cadre of child psychologists and Just Do It! Suburban housewives decided that we all needed to stop fast in our tracks and devote a solid portion of our waking hours to this confederacy of brats.
Contrary to every intuition of mine that is decent and pure, I’ve learned the following: Tweens have opinions, identities and personas. They have important feelings and emotions that have to be considered and lavished-over. Tweens mean business, they want the world, and they want it now. Tweens have zest and zing. They are sophisticates. Life is not hard for Tweens, it is a comfortable escapade that one saunters through with a stuffed belly full of fried jalapeno poppers. Tweens live by several mantras, here is one: “Gimme! Me!” If a Tween falls in the forest, the current protocol is to immediately run to his or her aid with a newly purchased Ipod and a knapsack full of DVDs. Tweens should be lauded and respected. If you are a parent, and your Tween is not the most utterly stupendous, most amazing once-in-a-lifetime miracle that has ever happened to you, you are a hideous, unworthy ogre.
Tweens have clout. As has been widely reported in the media, after several high-level meetings, the nation’s advertisers placed a seething-red bulls-eye on the Tween age group. The reason for this, and for their ever-expanding power, is so obvious: Tweens are practically drowning in cash.
How’s your discretionary income looking? Well, as any advertising Jack or Bob worth his Sprite will tell you, Tween’s wallets are practically snow-blowing cash day and night. “Tweens are so reliable, so consistent. They, collectively, are an unstoppable cash cow … picture Godzilla in braces with a Visa gold card, and that’s your average Tween,” says dazed marketing executive Taylor Trumbell. “When I was a lad, sometimes I’d pop down to the corner store to buy some animal crackers or marbles with my meager allowance, but this generation is different … they come into the mall guns blazing, and they don’t stop until the amount of merchandise is literally impossible to carry. Then, they hire a team of elephants or a helicopter to cart it away.”
How did they get this cash? Who cares. There is a nasty internet rumor that behind every Tween stands an exasperated father or mother with a gargantuan credit card bill, but to that I say, “Stuff it in your craw, Daddy,” to which Daddy would say, “Um, OK sport. Sounds great!” The truth is, Tweens are high functioning and operate as autonomous purchasing machines that will stop at nothing until every silly machine, overpriced wardrobe, and ridiculous gadget has been emptied from the country’s malls.
While this might seem like a positive for us adults (if only because it will allow us to find the things that we want and can actually afford, like bananas and paper clips), in reality it is an ominous sign. We are at the cusp of the French Revolution in parent/tween relations and things are only going to get increasingly ugly. You see, when the lower classes gain momentum, and can see the mantle of power glowing on high, the rebellion is truly under way and nothing can stop its progress.
Which is why I fully expect to be led to the guillotine by a pack of gum chewing Jessica Simpson look-alikes in the not-to-distant future. (Seth Barnes can be contacted at).
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 2, 2006. Read the original PDF.