The other night at the table, our teenage son told us that school isn't like it was when we went to school, and we just were not capable of understanding the kind of pressures they were under today. I've heard this story from pretty much all the kids within the last year of how hard their lives are, how much harder they have to work than we do, and they'd trade lives with us in a heartbeat.

You want to trade places? With me? Oh, you little fools, you have no idea. If you want to know what grown up life is like, if you want to know about stress, hard work, and how much pain your body is truly capable of handling, let me tell you about my life and let's see if you still want to trade:

I went to school in a time before society has become so PC and lenient that they let kids sleep in class. If ~I~ slept, or even tried to, it would have been to the office with me. Mouthing off to the teachers? Better wear the padded jeans because they still practiced corporal punishment when I was in grade school, and they hit HARD.

Our generation was on the cutting edge of the drug problem in schools, and it was our generation that laughed at pansy natural stuff like pot and started cooking up some really nasty synthetic stuff. To this day, I am still amazed that I made it almost to the end of high school before I got sucked into that crowd because it was all around me, everywhere.

I spent 2 years of middle school pretty much having the life beat out of me on a daily basis. There is really no form of physical or mental humiliation that I did not undergo during those two years, and that fact alone is largely responsible for my really long fuse when it comes to holding back my rage, and my extreme disrespect for anyone who feels they have to dress, act, and be like everyone else.

I have learned that it takes guts to stand out and be different, and very few people have that.

I started working at 15. (Actually around 13, if you count mowing yards occasionally.) I didn't have a huge allowance handed to me. I didn't expect my parents to fork out for every little thing I wanted. They couldn't afford to, and even if they could have, they wouldn't. My parents wanted me to learn to respect what it took to earn a dollar, and feel the satisfaction of spending it well. This is one of the lesson I am most grateful for in my life: I've earned everything I have, and I'm proud of it.

If I wanted something I had to work for it and get it myself. I wanted a car, and a nice guitar, so I cleaned bathrooms and stocked shelves at stores until I paid for them myself. And to this day, I still have the guitar.

Since that first job, I have spent 18 years working non-stop. No summer vacations, no winter and spring breaks. When I wasn't in school, I was working. When I graduated from High School I had my first full-time position within a week and half, digging trenches and big stinking muddy swamp-water holes, here in Florida, in the hottest part of the summer.

That pretty much set the tone for what my working career was like until I hit my mid-30's: a long non-stop string of horrible, nasty jobs. If the job wasn't physically horrible (like when I came down with chemically-induced pneumonia in New York from inhaling acid fumes all day long at a facility with no ventilation) they were mentally torturous.

But, I had to work. You don't work, you don't eat. I was never more than one week away from losing everything. So if I was sick, I worked. If there was overtime to be had, I took it. Just when I finally started getting caught up, I got married.

Let me state for the record that up to this point, I thought that I had conquered it all. Physically, mentally, I had it covered. I felt like life could throw me anything, and I could handle it because I'd already seen the worst of it.

You have NO IDEA what real life is like until you have kids. None whatsoever.

Suddenly, it's not just myself that I am carrying along, but my wife and kids. Before, if I found myself at a horrible job, I could just quit.

I found in those early years in New York that I can feed myself for an entire week on a $0.88 package of hot dogs (on sale because of the expiration date) and a $0.50 package of sort-of fresh hot dog buns. I didn't do this for fun; after the rent was paid there were countless weeks when I had less than $20 to live on, and well over half of that I needed for train & bus fare so I could get to work. (Did I hear you say "What about a car?" If your grocery budget for the week is approximately $7, you can't afford a car. Period.)

But starving (I weighed 152 soaking wet back then, and I am 6' tall) and doing without taught me that I COULD do without, if I had to. So if the job was bad enough, I could leave. But with a family, you can't do that. Kids are expensive and they do not understand the concept of rationing food when there is no more. When you have a bunch of other people depending on you for their survival, suddenly your options change.

When you find yourself working at a horrible job with a boss that hates you, and you know, you KNOW that he's just looking for an excuse to fire you, but you need that cash, so you hang on, man, you hang on. Suck it up, walk it off, whatever you need to do, but you do the job because you got a family. There is no backing out of that responsibility.

When I couldn't get overtime, I worked a second job. Anything I could get for money. Yes, I bagged groceries at Publix. I worked for the Police Benevolent Society, begging for donations. I sold vinyl siding on the phone. I did what I had to do.

After too many years of this, working constantly to just keep the lights on and food on the table, I decided to go to college so I could get a better paying job.

Again, I thought I'd seen the worst that life could throw at me. I can juggle, baby, I can juggle. Throw it on, I can handle it. Lesson: don't ever say "It can't get any worse than this..." It can, and it will.

I found myself working a 50 hour weeks (remember, I still needed the overtime just to pay the bills) as a mechanic in a stifling factory with no air conditioning, going to school 1/2 time (if you do less than 1/2 time, then you do not qualify for a student loan. I had to maintain that.), doing hours of intense homework, and still doing what I can around the house. I got, if I was lucky, 3 to 4 hours of sleep.

I did that for 4 and a half years.

I am now finally at the point where I am making decent money, but just like everything else that is relative. Everything is way more expensive today, teenagers are ~horribly~ expensive (if you don't think so, you've never paid for a 14 year old girl's shopping trip, or for the car insurance on a 16 year old boy), and even now, I am just getting by.

Today, I wake up at 4am and work a 10 hour day. I still don't get summer, winter, or spring breaks. I haven't had those since I was 16.

I do get vacation time, but that is almost always used on doing work around the house (like I will be doing with my vacation this month). I have had a total of 4 vacations (each only a week long) that I can remember in my entire adult life, where I actually WENT ON VACATION and didn't work.

I come home, and my wife and I make dinner. We clean up after dinner, pick up the trash (teenagers think they are grown up, but they are really nothing more than whiny, demanding 8 year-olds in bigger bodies) around the house, do the bills, and run errands.

If we are lucky, we might get an hour to just relax and not do anything for anyone else.

On the weekends, it's more work: Grocery shopping, vacuuming, cleaning bathrooms, and the hundred other chores that make up running a house.

So kids, that's my story. Maybe that will help you understand why I laugh and say "You don't have a clue!" when you talk about how tough life is right now. One day you'll understand the frustration of trying to explain this to your own teenager who thinks they already understand everything. It's like trying to explain nuclear fission to a 5 year old: they are just not equipped to understand yet.

So yeah, I'll trade all this in. I'll be happy to sleep in till 6:30, go to school where I can sleep some more on my desk without fear of repercussion. I'll come home after spending only 7-1/2 hours at school, and play video games or go hang out with my friends all day until it's time to sleep again. I'll let you feed and clean up after me, and take care of the messes I leave behind. Plus, you'll drive me around wherever I want to go, and I don't even need to pay for it. And the best part is, I don't even have to thank you for any of it. After all, you owe me.

So yeah... I'll trade lives with you. Where do I sign up???