My young niece is now living in the backyard

[Klaatu]

My 16 year old niece and my sister live with me. We have a good sized place on about an acre, chickens, turkeys, country living near the city kind of thing.

My niece Cristiana is a quite intelligent young lady, straight A’s, debate team captain, etc.

So I come home from work and go out in the back yard, (which is about a half-acre with some trees, grass and such) and see a tent pitched near the turkey pen. I see Cris and ask her whats up?

She says “I am now officially against Materialism, I want to go live in a yurt in Nepal.”

I say “Cool, got a flashlight?” She says “Well no…” so I give her one and then she comes in and asks her mom for stuff to cook a vegan meal with in the solar oven we have. (The solar oven is way cool actually)

Then I ask Cris if she needs anything else for the big anti-materialistic move to the back yard, and she says “No, I got my cell phone and my Ipod”

So I go out front and have a couple beers, and when I go back in, Cris is at the computer IM’ing, and I say, " I thought you were off the grid living in the yard? you know, anti-materialism and all that? She says, well, duh, I still have to talk to my friends!"

Dang kids.

[friedo]

That reminds me of when I was about ten, and decided that I was now a vegetarian, except for hamburgers.

[Zebra]

Is she still wearing clothes?

[Oakminster]

Youth is wasted on the young.

[Sage_Rat]

@Klaatu

My niece Cristiana is a quite intelligent young lady, straight A’s, debate team captain, etc.

[narrator]And thus the world was introduced to the idea of “school intelligent” as opposed to “actually intelligent.”[/narrator]

[The_King_of_Soup]

Oh-oh. Actually, I just read an article about this in Southwest Secondary Education Quarterly. Sounds like your niece is going feral.

Here’s a link to the article “Feral Honors Students: Public Health Threat, Normal Adolescent Phase, or New Source of Grant Money?” It’s from the Fall 2004 issue, and you have to buy a subscription to get to the archives, but I’ll excerpt some passages that will give you the gist (if anybody thinks I’m going beyond fair use, call a Moderator and we’ll let him/her sort it out):

@SSEQ

Almost 8500 students between the tenth and eleventh grades have left the educational systems of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada in the last five years, although their grades are among the highest in their schools … They don’t fit the usual pattern of disinterest and underachievement that leads to “dropping out,” nor does their subsequent behavior match the norm. These students are not merely dropping out but renouncing materialism and leaving their homes to live an out-of-doors existence apart from civilization – becoming part of a phenomenon recently identified as “feral honors student” syndrome, or FHS.

… How do these FHS spend their time? By foraging for food and ill-fitting clothing, sleeping, and “scaring the pants off the local residents,” says sheriff Bob Service of Okun County, AZ. “People in town don’t mind the out-and-out delinquents much,” explained the sheriff. "They just hang around, engage in a little half-hearted panhandling, maybe some petty theft and vandalism. You can deal with that.

“But these new ones (FHS) are a different breed entirely. Suppose you’re taking your garbage out or walking your dog, it’s night, and this dark shape looms up out of nowhere, reeking of Nature, and recites ‘The cremation of Sam McGee’ at you. That’s just not normal. Or you go out in the morning and there’s quadratic equations all over your driveway in yellow chalk. It’s freakish in a way that broken windows and muggings aren’t, and it’s frankly demoralizing.”

Sageboro Animal Control Chief Justin Blatter agrees. “The worst time of year is right after rainy season, when they all do their science-fair projects. Old Mrs. Borley ran across one of those things that had been left in a tree, and she’d called the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the FBI and Homeland Security before her husband Ed could get her all wrapped up in a sheet. That was a bad two days of paperwork, let me tell you.”

… But at least some of these FHS are demonstrating behaviors indicative of a propensity to someday return to civilization. Hal Corbett of the Sierra Club explains: “Examination of these FHS nests, or ‘yurts,’ yields a lot of primitive academic awards, crudely constructed out of moss, bark, pebbles, whatever’s handy. I saw one feral honors student, probably genus valedictoria, fight a magpie for a foil gum wrapper. You never heard such squawking and Latin declensions. The subject won, and the foil later adorned a small mud-and-grass trophy with ‘First Place, Spellympiad 2002’ scratched into the base with a twig. I got several to come quite close to me, even with my modern capitalistic scent, just by attaching several small letter A’s to my face and clothing…similarly, an effective technique for homeowners, copy-machine proprietors and anyone else wishing to repel these pests is to splash red correction ink and B-minuses around the perimeter of their property.” So eventually, scientists think, we may be able to use the natural attraction/aversion impulses of these FHS individuals to bring them home and then send them to college, whence they will eventually return home again, and good luck from there on out …

[Shirley_Ujest]

Does this mean she will be catching all her own food and forgo shaving of the pits and legs?
Youth is fun to watch.

[carnivorousplant]

@Shirley Ujest

Does this mean she will be catching all her own food and forgo shaving of the pits and legs?

I just had a vision of a nubile 16 year old girl sucking at a rabbit’s torn throat.
I may never post again.

[BiblioCat]

@Klaatu

…and then she comes in and asks her mom for stuff to cook a vegan meal with in the solar oven we have.

And Mom should have said, “Go grow your own food.”

Then I ask Cris if she needs anything else for the big anti-materialistic move to the back yard, and she says “No, I got my cell phone and my Ipod”

I see this phase lasting as long as the batteries do.

[Anaamika]

@Oakminster

Youth is wasted on the young.

Yes, because you don’t have any money to buy the really cool stuff and you have a curfew and you have to do what your parents say and stuff.

Or is that not what you meant?

[Sailboat]

@The King of Soup

Oh-oh. Actually, I just read an article about this in Southwest Secondary Education Quarterly. Sounds like your niece is going feral.

Here’s a link to the article “Feral Honors Students: Public Health Threat, Normal Adolescent Phase, or New Source of Grant Money?” It’s from the Fall 2004 issue, and you have to buy a subscription to get to the archives, but I’ll excerpt some passages that will give you the gist (if anybody thinks I’m going beyond fair use, call a Moderator and we’ll let him/her sort it out):

HA haha! I’ve been whooshed – I tried to click on your links. Couldn’t believe it wasn’t the April 01 issue. Then I noticed the name of the poster…another dazzling effort! Touché!

Sailboat

[Anaamika]

@Anaamika

Yes, because you don’t have any money to buy the really cool stuff and you have a curfew and you have to do what your parents say and stuff.

Or is that not what you meant?

My response sounds a little snarky! But I don’t mean it to be.

[WhyNot]

Seriously? Tell her to check out The Farm. (Yes, they’re still around.) She can apply for an apprenticeship over the summer or just a visit. They have electricity and even phones and all the modern stuff, but they are big into eco-responsibility, self-sustainabilty and all the rest.

There’s no longer any need to put away the i-pod to live an less-materialist existence.

[the_chicken_of_exeter]

ha this sounds like my attempt to live in a tree to stop a motorway being built. that lasted about as long as my cd players batteries and my supplies of toilet paper and weed. i was going to try to defend the bizarre notions of my fellow teenagers, but really, theres no point. i blame all you older generation. you did all the good stuff.

[NailBunny]

Heh Heh.

I remember when I was thirteen and read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and then announced to everyone that I was now a Muslim.

The next morning my stepmother made bacon for breakfast and that was that.

She still teases me to this day.

[Clothahump]

@friedo

That reminds me of when I was about ten, and decided that I was now a vegetarian, except for hamburgers.

Bumper sticker seen last weekend:

VEGETARIAN: INDIAN WORD FOR LOUSY HUNTER.

[swampbear]

The King of Soup absolutely brilliant! Dopers y’all are gonna be so jealous of me. See, I’ve actually had the priviledge of meeting TKOS. Eat your hearts out!

I thought feral pretty much described all teenagers.