Everyone was young once. Adolescence, which is roughly the period between ages 16 and 25, is THE time in your life when you experience the strongest emotions, emotions contingent on loss but also fulfilment, expression but also suppression.

You could almost say that one's adolescence is failed if you haven't felt the strongest degree of pain and also of pleasure that it is possible for a human being to feel.

When we attack someone for having fun in college -- I am not talking about sexual assault, which is always wrong -- we may be attacking our best selves! Moreover, we are failing to understand the crucial connection between a free-spirited adolescence and a later adulthood of stability, discipline, and delayed satisfaction. There's a direct relation between how much fun you had in college and how steady you are now. The Pharisees who are riled up about the Judge's being the life of the party during law school -- well, I think they're probably all vulnerable to falling off the wagon at any point now. An out-of-control 60-year-old is not very funny.

Maxim: Indulge the adolescent so he or she can become ... a good citizen.

Hey, and don't you love Katrina and the Waves? Case closed.