"Haven't You Got Any Brains?"

The title of this entry comes from the gentleman who lives across the street from me. Ed is an older gentleman. I believe he is around 80. His mobility is down, and he lives alone. Well almost alone. He has a dog named Daisy.
Daisy is a golden retriever with more energy than a seven year old drinking Red Bull. She bounds and leaps all the time. I once saw her start to climb the tree in the yard after a squirrel. Before that day, I thought there was no way a dog could climb, but she changed my mind. I'm still convinced that I will come home one day to see her sitting on a branch with part of that squirrel's tale just sticking out the side of her mouth. But I digress....
Now, as I said before, Ed is an older gentleman, and Daisy is a younger dog (around 2 or 3). So when she decides to act up, Ed can only do one thing: yell at her in the most colorful language. As Ed walked around his yard plucking weeds today, Daisy bounded after him wherever he went. Ed became frustrated and yelled at her such things as, "Stop it you damn fool," and, "Haven't you got any brains?" In the worst moments, he just yells, "Daisy! No!" He never hits her, he brings her inside when the weather is really bad, and generally Ed loves Daisy. He just cannot control her. When he tells her to sit down, she just looks at him as if he were meowing.
I bring this up, because Ed's relationship with Daisy reminds me of the teenager/parent relationships of many of the students I teach. The parents are sure that what they are saying should be easily understood, and they get mad when their kids don't understand. At the same time, the kids are testing their parents' boundaries, but they also do not understand what their parents want from them. The parents view their children as dumb creatures, and the kids see their parents as old fogies who cannot keep up with the world. Still, the parents love their children and take care of them even when they want to kill them, and those teens do listen now and then. Like Daisy, however, I wouldn't be surprised to see those teens in that tree.