WRITTEN BY STEVE JOHNSTON ILLUSTRATED BY PAUL SCHMID

UNTIL MY CHILDREN became teen-agers, I didn't realize I was a complete moron.

For the first half of my life, I thought I had things pretty well together. For example, I could get up in the morning, get myself dressed, fed and out the front door to a job where people actually paid me to work for them. If these people thought I was a moron, they never let on.

At one time, even my children seemed to think I was capable of handling daily routine tasks, such as deciding that a certain pair of pants went with a shirt. I could drive a car at the speed limit without someone pointing out that I was a danger to fellow motorists because I was driving too fast or too slow or — worst of all — I was driving the wrong kind of car!

Something happened to my brain, however, when my children started turning into teenagers. It wasn't like the bumper sticker that says: "Insanity is inherited. You get it from your children." I didn't go insane. At least I don't think so. I just became a complete moron.

I am still able to get myself up, dressed, fed and out the door without running into a wall or tying my shoelaces together. But you wouldn't know that talking with the Johnston teenage children.

It turns out that I am such an insufferable moron that the Johnston children have to roll their eyeballs completely to the back of their heads when I speak. I haven't figured out if they do this trick in order to make a statement about the content of my conversation or because it is so painful to hear my voice that they're afraid their heads will explode and they have to roll their eyeballs back in order to relieve the pressure.

Of course, they could be rolling their eyeballs because I am relentlessly beating them up with my hard line of questioning. I am asking them such things as, "How was your day?" and that real killer, "How was school?" Then I hit them with the question that makes their eyelids flutter and the drool run down the corners of their curled-up lips: "Do you have any homework?"

(I must digress for a moment. I've been married to the Truly Unpleasant Mrs. Johnston for the last two centuries. She has made it clear that she doesn't consider me to be the sharpest knife in the drawer or, as she likes to put it: "You're two bales short of a hayride." But I like to think her witty repartee is her way of showering me with those sweet nothings that married couples exchange to keep from killing each other. While some people believe that marriage is a natural state for human beings, those people aren't married. Marriage is designed so that people can have someone covering their backs when their children become teenagers. I am through digressing now and will return to my story.)

I have two children who have left their teen years — and the family household — and they can carry on a conversation with both Mrs. Johnston and myself. In fact, the oldest son is almost normal. But it will be a few more years before all the children become normal humans and we won't have to worry about them. Then Mrs. Johnston will have to find something else to occupy her time.

And that makes me very afraid.