One of the most prominent issues brought up by this people watching is the fact that teen-agers like for some reason to sound unintelligent and unsophisticated. Whatever they say does the opposite of command respect. For instance if I hear one more person use the catch phrase "whazzup" or use the word "like" 30 times in one sentence I just may be tempted to do or say something terribly rash.

I admit I was never the typical teen or the typical girl for that matter. And there are a few reasons for this but mainly I just see the life of a teen-age girl pointless, utterly exhausting and quite frankly lame. Back to the topic of how teen-agers talk though there is one thing you'll never find me doing and that is talking on the phone for 2 or 4 hours to one of my friends explaining some useless teen-age drivel and frivolous banter. I have no idea how girls can get on the phone and yap away for hours on end to some one they've already spent the entire day with. Perhaps it's just me.

One thing that's even more bothersome then the phone talk however is the lack of any intelligent vocabulary. I find myself constantly dumbing down my speech and explaining vocabulary they should already know like "banter", "haughty", "enthralled", "caviar", "albeit", and "lewd." It's quite sad to think that these, my friends, are the smarter of the general masses. It's quite pathetic indeed.

However you have to hand it to them, whatever teen-age girls lack in vocabulary they make up by adding drama to everything. I don't know about any one else but I'm quite sick of the drama queen acts myself. You all know the girl that just exclaims "oh but Johnny doesn't love me! I could just die!" or "Today was the absolute worst day of my life. I'm never going back for as long as I live!" Personally I am quite annoyed by the over use of exclamations and the absurd over exaggerations.

However it's no small wonder why they talk the way they do. I blame the media, their music and their literature of which I'll be only talking about the latter since the media would take another half an hour to critique.

All the girls I know of listen to pop music. This wouldn't be so bad if they