‘Teen thing’ can appear suddenly

You’re in the kitchen one morning, you hear footsteps, you turn around and there before you, easily 6 inches taller than the night before, stands your living, mouth-breathing teenager. It speaks. “I’m hungry.”

There are more shockers – some pitiful, some gamey, some downright awful – that tell you in no uncertain terms that a teen lurks among you.

These Horsemen of the Adolescence thunder in, and suddenly …

1. The bread you lugged home over the weekend is gone – crusts and all – by Monday night. Both loaves.

2. One of the two gallons of milk you lugged home with the bread is also AWOL, last seen seated at the right hand of your son during ESPN’s “SportsCenter.”

3. Your nightly ritual is now: eat; and repeat until at least 11 p.m.

4. Your morning ritual: rise; plug in coffee; let dog out; go to bottom of stairs; scream “Stop using so much water!!! Get out of the shower, for God’s sake.”

5. Ironically, despite this water and hygiene obsession, you now instinctively avoid their rooms on warm days.

6. Her iPOD is referred to as “my iPOD,” but the one your spouse gave you she now refers to as “our IPOD” because it’s hooked into the family car speakers so it can blare System of a Down even if only for the few blocks to school, where she bolts from the car before it stops moving so no one sees that she has a parent.

7. The sight of your children immediately triggers an anxious interior monologue in which you try to fathom why you feel clumsy, ineffectual and also pretty sure there are about a half-dozen things you don’t know about them – and it’s better that way.

8. They snicker openly at the subtlest of television and movie jokes about extremely adult behaviors, and suddenly you know in your bone marrow that they get the joke completely.

9. Terrifying mood swings no longer instantly signal, “I need to go back in my crib for a nap.” They signal one of three emotional states that will rule your home until further notice: blazing hatred, incalculable grief or unnervingly intense joy.

10. Your hours of tenacious workouts at the gym and meticulous grooming simultaneously produce a vibrant woman (or man) clearly in her (or his) prime and a shiver of disgust from your kid, who begs you not to look hot “because … I don’t know … it’s just … weird.”

11. A box of mac ‘n ‘cheese becomes a boy’s pre-dinner snack, and “pre-dinner” means five minutes beforehand.

12. Your daughter is now a head of hair with two ear-bud wires threading out of it, leading to a music player so ever-present that it apparently got grafted onto her hand at some point. (You don’t know when; you were out getting bread, milk and boxes of mac ‘n’ cheese.)

13. The words “I need a ride to …” elicit the same burst of anxiety and dread you felt years ago when the baby monitor would erupt after a nap that was nowhere near long enough and there goes a nice quiet afternoon.

14. The words, “Can I drive to …” elicit an even sharper burst of anxiety and dread, followed by you leaping from the couch shouting “No! It’s OK! I’ll drive!”

15. You are no longer a father gazing at young men with fondness born of your own boyhood memories, but with barely concealed loathing because you vividly recall that all you cared about at their age was badgering and pawing at some girl until she gave in. Some girl like … your daughter.

16. You are no longer a mother gazing at young women with tenderness born of your own girlhood memories, but with the seething suspicion that one of them is going to get herself pregnant by your hormone-dazed son, plus how come they all dress like hookers all of a sudden?

17. Your daughter does not wish to discuss the possibility of this happening to her; she really, really does not want to discuss the possibility of this happening to you; and your son really, really, really, God-please-stop-nah-nah-nah-nah-I-can’t- hear-you does not want to discuss it, or even think about it, ever.

18. Your son comes down the stairs one day transformed, essentially, into a building with feet.

19. Your daughter comes down the stairs right behind him transformed into … Whoa … Someone who would benefit so much more from home schooling, at this point. Definitely, home schooling. Followed by college at an incredibly remote all-girls school, hang the expense.

20. Razors? What razors? Oh – the ones you just got? You think you’ll actually get to use them?

21. No more baby sitters. You can go out whenever you want! Except … You don’t, because suddenly hitting Blockbuster with them, going home, amassing junk food and curling up with them as they discover Spielberg or Hitchcock or Woody Allen is better than anything in the world, and how come everyone said this teen thing would be so awful anyway?