Cruisin' If you want to truly infuriate your teen point out any similarities between them now and yourself at their age. They find nothing more objectionable than to be accused of being like their parents. They don’t want to be like their parents. They want to be different, like everybody else. If you doubt me you need go no further than any Main Street on any Friday or Saturday night. The art of “cruising” is alive and well. The parade begins as it has in its various forms since time immemorial. Very little has changed over the years. As I watched such a cavalcade last weekend, I remembered picking up my buddy, Randy Fulp, on Saturday nights in my 1961 Volkswagen bug. Randy and I had spent several Saturday afternoons doing things to my VW that, in our minds, would enhance its potential to attract members of the opposite sex. Reversing the wheel rims on the back of the car was held in particularly high regard. It was rumored that sixteen year-old girls had all they could do to resist the charm and mystique thus bestowed upon the driver of such a vehicle. If you were lucky enough to score a Coors beer tap handle to exchange for your factory gear shift knob, so much the better. The cars along Main Streets today are similarly festooned with the modification d’jour. An entire armada of Clearasil stained motorists, CD tracks blaring, join the circus. Cars bursting with hormones and the self-importance of youth trundle along in a mating processon that hasn’t changed one meaningful iota (whatever an iota may be) in all these years. Oh there is the occasional “highlight” created by a few free spirits who find themselves compelled to remove what suddenly becomes an optional article of clothing and expose a body part here and there. But classical cruising behavior consists primarily of screaming at the top of one’s lungs and waving madly from every orifice the car has until, and unless, one pulls alongside another car filled with members of the opposite sex. At that point a confusing rite is observed. Everyone in both vehicles freezes and stares straight ahead. The only conversation that takes place occurs in the corners of everyone’s mouth as they try to ascertain, without actually looking, whether the occupants of the other car are “looking” at them. Of course, they aren’t. That wouldn't be “cool”. And so it goes. One might think researching this story would have been a pleasant trip down memory lane. Not so. Nothing in my journalistic career has proved so completely ego deflating. Picture it. A fifty year-old man, I pull up to a stoplight in my potentially cool Camaro. I stop next to a car full of hopeful sixteen-year old girls who, breaking their own rules of engagement, sneak a peek over to see who is driving. I look back and smile what I thought was a good natured, fatherly smile. Nothing prepared me for the six pretty little faces that looked back at me, crestfallen in such abject disappointment. Oh well. It has always been thus. I suspect that if Plato hadn’t been too platonic to have kids they’d have frightened the citizenry by careening their chariots around the arena while playing their lutes too loudly and throwing their togas up over each other’s shoulders. There truly is nothing new under the sun.