The following is from Chapter 7, "Unauthorized Physical Changes," in which I discuss hair, PMS, braces (the most expensive metal on earth) and even worse changes—those that provide disturbing reminders why our species is called "mammals."

Acne
The day the first pimple enters the household on the face of a teenager daughter there will be much hysterical raving. She'll lock herself in her bedroom, sobbing, while the rest of the family gathers on the other side of the door in concern.

"I'm never coming out. Never!" she'll wail.

"While you're in there, why don't you pick up a little," you will suggest helpfully. Everyone in the family will give you a look of sheer disgust.

"She can't. She has acne," you'll be told.

Sirens blazing, the family will race off to the pharmacy to purchase an array of anti-acne treatments—enough chemicals to destroy the ozone layer in a single application.

"Try this. The label is in French and it was extremely expensive," your wife will babble. "It's the secretion of a pregnant albino platypus."

"All this stuff goes on top of the skin. Acne comes from below the skin," you will argue. "Would you use a gel to treat appendicitis?"

Inserting logic into this particular hostage crisis will not be appreciated—your daughter wants sympathy, not dermatology.

Your wife grabs the Home Emergency Medical Reference Guide and starts calling things through the door. "Try applying hot compresses!" she suggests.

"Do you mean to tell me that acne is considered an Emergency Medical condition?" you demand. Has the entire world gone crazy?

"It says here that if you get a bit of a sun burn, it can get rid of pimples!" your wife says.

There's a pause in the hysterical sobbing. "Really?"

"I guess, though, that if you're not leaving your room, that leaves that out," you observe. Everyone is staring at you again. "What?"

"You're not helping," your wife informs you.

"What do you mean? I'm here, part of the Pimple Emergency Response Team, aren't I? You're in charge of over-reaction, I'm in charge of sanity."

"You're the one who always over-reacts, dad," your younger daughter advises archly.

"You do seem to have problems adjusting to the fact that your daughter is becoming a woman," your wife agrees psychiatrically.

"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my life. She is not becoming a woman!"

"Are you still there?" your older daughter sniffs.

"Don't worry, we're still panicking," you reply. "We're just doing it more quietly."

"Do you want to try getting a little sun, dear?" your wife wants to know. "Maybe that will help."

"Or a tanning booth?" comes the voice on the other side of the door.

"That's right. We have a perfectly good sun up there in the sky for free, so let's run off and pay forty bucks a visit to a tanning salon," you reason.

"You can save twenty dollars if you buy three in advance," your younger daughter advises.

"Oh, well, if you can save twenty dollars…"

"If I'm going to go to a tanning salon, I'm going to need a new bathing suit," your older daughter warns.

You will feel your patience being sapped by all this negotiating. Maybe later you should take a video of your daughter's bedroom door so that years from now you can better remember what it was like to talk to her as a teenager. "I thought sun causes wrinkles anyway," you shout.

"Yeah, when you're like thirty years old," your younger daughter sneers. "By then, who cares what you look like, your life is over anyway."

Well, that's a good point.