Relieving Boredom in Teenagers

What can help teenagers to alleviate boredom? Forget about new video games and new movies. What about finding an exciting true-life story about a living pterosaur in the United States? What about many such nonfiction stories? The new second edition of Live Pterosaurs in America may help relieve boredom in some teenagers, and it can do more than that, if the examples of Peter Theiss, of Florida, and Phillip O’Donnell, of Oregon, teach us anything.

Twelve-year-old Peter Theiss, of Florida, found some of my web pages on living pterosaurs, in 2009, and became interested in the subject; perhaps “passionate” is the word, for in mid-2010 he himself interviewed an eyewitness of an apparent living pterosaur that had flown over an area of St. Louis, Missouri, in mid-2004. Peter asked me for advice in his interview and I suggested questions for the eyewitness. The results are published in that second edition of Live Pterosaurs in America; the twelve-year-old is given credit on page thirty-six.

But this child’s contibution to cryptozoology is only a recent addition. In July of 2006, the book Dinosaurs – Dead or Alive was published, about the same time as the first edition of my first book, Searching for Ropens. The author was Phillip O’Donnell, a teenager. My assistance was minimal and only for a limited time; Phillip is now independent. Since publishing his book, he has gone on at least one living-pterosaur expedition in the United States, with a professor of biology (no, the professor is not a teenager).

I should not have been surprised when Peter confided in me that he was also thinking about writing a book. So how does all this relate to boredom in teenagers? Nothing. That is the point. Becoming actively involved in the investigations of reports of modern living dinosaurs and pterosaurs—that kicks boredom out the front door, even if young persons do not actually go on expeditions to seek living dinosaurs and pterosaurs.

How does all this relate to this blog, The Bible and Modern Pterosaurs? Peter and Phillip and I believe in the literal Flood of Genesis and in other literal interpretations of the Bible. This has freed us from the burden of the dogma of universal extinctions of all dinosaurs and pterosaurs, allowing an exciting outlook on life, with freedom to seek more truth and reveal what we discover. Boredom evaporates.