It is a funny thing to deal with teenagers.

If you ain't one yourself, then you have to either try to find a common ground or just plow ahead, believing that as an adult, you know best.

Now, I have a daughter.

She seems to be having some of the same problems that I had as a teenager, although I have done my best to alleviate what I can on the homefront. But since I still have some of the same problems I had as a teenager and she shares them, the two of us are in many ways spitting at the tide.

One of our problems is the old "what do I want to do when I'm done doing what I have to" thing, which often leads to a lot of thinking about what you want to do while you are doing what you have to. Which leads to allegations of distraction and an inability to pay attention coupled with the pressed canard of "not working to potential".

And she's lonely when she isn't off in her little world of reading and drawing. No matter how much I think about this, I fail to come up with a solution because I am in much the same situation.

"But, you are married!," someone who is not would say. Anyone who is married will understand how it is possible for two people to be lonely in the same room. And when you have three in the house, well, then, the air is full of loneliness.

I have arranged my life so that I don't have to deal with many people that I don't really want to. I have also learned enough about what is really going on in my head that I can deal with strangers for a few minutes at a time. A teenager doesn't really have that option.

There is also the problem that when someone does evince interest in us or asks us a question, we can inundate them with too much information. It's like a floodgate. For some reason "normal" people can't deal with this unless it involves shoes or football.

Now, the possibility exists of two similar people encountering each other in a school-like environment. Unfortunately, the likelihood of their sharing exactly the same interests can be elusive. If it does happen, then you might have twice as much loneliness, because one outsider has now become a team.

In this instance, she has it better than I do, because she has the opportunity to meet so many more people. When I was her age, I had a tendency to hang around with people who weren't too particular and then I would mimic them in the hopes of somehow getting it right. I have a strong suspicion to this day that just saying the words is not the same thing as knowing the subject.

Nowadays I hide as much as I can.

So maybe the best that I can do is provide a refuge... if the child needs to do the same.