A few weeks back, I was visiting my grandparent's for an anniversary picnic, and the topic of JB came up. I don't know how, really XD....Ah, who am I kidding, it always comes up around me and my sisters. Anyway, my grandmother asked who exactly they were, and before I could even answer, my mom immediately goes: "they're three brothers from New Jersey who have a band."
I was so proud.
So I started thinking about how strange it must be for my poor parents, who are starting to learn to just not ask. But I give them credit. If they aren't interested, they sure pretend well. But parents everywhere are dealing with the Jonas mania. I saw a ton of shoutouts to Mom and Dad, thanking them for the tickets at the BU concerts I was at.
And so this...happened. I don't know what to call this. But here it is.
A Parent’s Guide to OJD
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Dear Parent,
It has come to our attention that your child has been diagnosed with the newly-discovered affliction referred to as Obsessive Jonas Disorder, also known as “OJD”. You may be feeling very confused and worried about what that means, and what to expect.
You are not alone in these concerns. A great many teenagers across the globe have fallen victim to this disorder. It is predominant in girls, but can strike anywhere. Most cases of OJD in males is transferred via a sister or female friend.
Because so many parents are dealing with raising a child or children with this affliction, this manual has been made to help them cope and provide useful information.
Stage One: Early OJD
At first, OJD may be mistaken for normal adolescent behavior. Experts say that is how the disorder goes for a good amount of time without detection. The typical warning signs are not all that unusual and may not mean anything, but when several are present, it could be time to worry:
- Excessive use of the word ‘poned’
- Replaying the Jonas CD over and over (watch out for one with a black cover, and one with a tan background and three boys on the cover)
- A lack of wall space due to unordinary amounts of posters
- A sudden taste for Red Bull and sugary, yellow cereal
- For older teens, a newly renewed interest in the Disney Channel
If you see any of these signs, do not panic. Odds are, you’re just dealing with a teenager. But if these symptoms become disruptive, it may be time to seek professional advice. The biggest telltale sign of coming OJD is if your child has a friend already afflicted. This disorder is more like a disease in that it spreads rapidly and without warning. Contact for only minutes can lead to infection. Watch out for CDs or magazines coming home with your child. If there are three brown-haired boys on the cover, there is a good chance it is contaminated.
You may try to dispose of it, but if your child is already in the Third Stage of OJD (Defensiveness), that will not be as easy as it sounds.
Stage Two: Concert Attendance
Now that your child has passed through the initial stage of OJD, it is unavoidable that soon they will be yearning to go to a Jonas concert. While the tickets for this event may be a bit of an expense, parents can expect to deal with moody, irritated, and very depressed kids should they not allow it.
It is necessary to go on the offensive to even get seats to the show—expect tickets that go on sale at 1:00 to sell out at 1:00:02.
Parents are also warned to pack heavy duty ear plugs for the show, if you are not lucky enough to have children who are old enough to drive themselves. The level of screaming at such a concert cannot be measured by human pitch, exceeding all known estimates. It has been said that glass is not shattered but liquefied in the presence of these intense shrieks. To those not accustomed to this, blocking ears would be a very good idea.
Along with tickets, these concerts can run up exorbitant prices when the cost of water and merchandise is factored in. Both are a necessity, despite how unnecessary you as a parent may find a thirty dollar t-shirt. The water is advised to hydrate the likely hyperventilating teen you are accompanying in order to keep them on their feet. If heavy breathing is not present, that usually foretells the aforementioned piercing screams that can erupt from even the quietest, calmest of teens.
This stage can also lead to a sudden interest in picking up an instrument, which can actually be seen as beneficial and stimulating. Unless you are expecting to hear the classics, however, because to be frank…you won’t.
This is the last stage of mild OJD. Once past this step, your child has reached moderate to severe OJD.
Stage Three: Oddities
This stage sees the start of the really strange aspects of OJD. Your child may become almost unrecognizable in the weeks to come, but it is not all that difficult to adapt. None of the behavior of this stage can really be seen as hazardous, just all-around weird. It would not be uncommon to have your teen request things like band members’ pictures on birthday cakes, life-sized cardboard cutouts, or new copies of the CD that they have listened to so many times it melted.
Most parents of children with OJD report seeing a piqued interest in chipmunks, tight pants, polygamy, scarves, and birdhouses. This is the stage where boyfriends may suddenly find themselves being asked to grow out, curl, or dye their hair. They should not be alarmed, and if the request is not a style they wish to embrace, a polite refusal is perfectly fine.
There is no doubt when the Jonas boys are on TV at this stage, thanks to the incoherent screeching that ensues at the slightest glimpse or briefest clip. Reactions are less intense when the appearance is on an expected channel, such as Disney. But parents may want to check the TV guide in advance to be prepared—if the boys show up on something unknown to your teen, the shock can lead to screaming known to cause bleeding from the ears. However, it is rather hard to have a surprise Jonas appearance for people with OJD. Odds are, they know the guys are going to be on a certain show before they themselves do, and already have the DVR set.
If you are one of the brave parents that wishes to embrace and understand the OJD references. This is good way to figure out the meaning behind a multitude of inside jokes, and discover why certain words cause giggles and conspiratorial glances.
There are a number of different resources for you:
- Youtube
- Fan sites
- Google
- The Jonas homepages
If you are extremely brave, you may chance exploring these websites in depth. Beware of what you may find. Some parents aren’t prepared and are shocked beyond comprehension. It’s important to remember the sheer number of teens affected with differing degrees of OJD, and what it can do to them.
Stage Four: Defensiveness
Now begins the more violent aspects of the disorder.
It should be kept in mind that insulting the band members in any way has always been a bad idea, but particularly from this stage on. Any bad-mouthing of the Jonas boys is met with livid glares, stinging retorts, and general rage, no matter who has made the comment. It has been reported that boys of a high school age have been beaten up quite viciously by angered younger sisters for insensitive comments or teasing.
Your teen no longer sees any reason to justify liking a Disney band to their friends. This could be because their friends have also been converted via subtle influence, but also can be due to the new and general lack of caring about what others may say. That, combined with the acquired fight reflex that makes them something of invincible, means that people with OJD are proud to show off their affliction.
Parents are often most taken aback by this stage, because it presents the most drastic changes. Alarm clocks are smashed when they interfere with ‘Jonas Dreams’. Rumored girlfriends are mercilessly slammed. Gossip flies faster than seems possible. Internet battles ensue between fans and other fandoms. Superficial fans are shown their place. Your sweet, innocent child suddenly has the motive to join with a massive group of their peers and drum up enough posts to crash an entire website if they don’t get what they want.
Stage Five: Hoarding
Collecting is the main attribute of this stage. Whether it’s information, merchandise, magazines, or pictures Jonas-related—your teen will be gathering multitudes of it and storing it in places you cringe to think about. That mess under their bed, in their closet…Now it has been infused with a certain OJD air that is hardly better than the junk already there, albeit more cared for.
Expect a sudden bounty of magazine subscriptions that you cannot recall ordering are arriving at your home, all featuring the same type of headlines: Love, friends, and Jonas.
Don’t be worried if your teen is able to quote commercials, or interject songs in everyday conversations. Unless it is interfering with schoolwork, it is nothing to be really concerned about. Some parents are frightened, however, to find themselves suddenly able to recite facts about the Jonas boys that they never imagined knowing. This is a natural byproduct of living with a person with OJD, but doesn’t necessarily mean you have the disorder. Unless you start pining after the members, it’s safe to say you’re fine. Take a few deep breaths, and it will pass.
Still other parents grow rather alarmed at the number of pictures of the youngest, underage band member saved on their over-18-year-old’s computer. This may incite fears of Dateline NBC showing up on your doorstep, but remain calm. In most cases, these pedophilic tendencies lead nowhere and diffuse harmlessly. In more extreme situations, the teen should be kept away from certain websites—or the internet in general—at particular times when the feelings are the strongest. This has been found to be usually late at night.
There is yet another, more dire fear when dealing with advanced stages of OJD, and particularly shows up in this stage. Be warned: If you have the radio on while your teen is driving, be sure to have it on a station that has no chance of playing a Jonas song. Should you hear the start of a familiar song—because at this point you surely know all of them—be prepared to grab for the steering wheel, as any one of these songs will cause extreme inattention to surroundings and an uncontrollable swerve reflex that is capable of causing fifty car pile-ups.
Stage Six: Stalking
This is the final stage of OJD, and therefore the most severe. Parents are most bewildered by this stage, because at first it seems as if their child has returned a state of somewhat normalcy. That is merely a transition into the more sly aspects of the disorder that tend to sneaky up on the unwary.
Teens are suddenly and intensely interested in any vacation to Texas, New Jersey, or California, and already have a planned itinerary. You may not understand the appeal of residential neighborhoods for sightseeing, until you realize who exactly lives there or has lived there.
Should you find anything by the way of night vision goggles or other strange equipment around the house, it should be quietly disposed of. While it is not recommended to confront your teen on this issue, as it may cause an avoidable argument, stalking behavior should not be encouraged unless the prospect of bailing your child out of jail is appealing.
Here it is important to point out that by this time, you will almost definitely have at least some of the strange line of self-questioning that occurs when your child is diagnosed with OJD. It is perfectly natural to be a bit unsure about these three boys that have such a huge effect on teens worldwide. You may find yourself wondering now and then if it’s all part of some grand world-domination scheme. It worries you that it would probably be successful, but not as much as the fact that all the teenage girls you know would welcome the takeover gladly, as already exhibited in their chants of ‘Nick J for President, 2038.’
They’ve been planning for it.
It’s safe to assume that it will happen.
Trust us.
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After illustrating the stages of OJD, it’s important to really look at how this disorder is spread.
How OJD is Transmitted
There are a multitude of different ways that Obsessive Jonas Disorder can be spread—from person to person, or from media to person, etc.
The five main causes are as follows:
- Magazines
- Television
- Radio
- Internet
- Friends
Magazines
While the Jonas boys do not grace the cover of every magazine on the newsstands, they are featured in a respectable variety. Of course, there are the usual teen magazines that have the faces of all three in a collage of headlines and other celebrities. These are the type that are mailed en masse to your home and encompass a large part of the hoarding of your teen.
There are the less obvious but still noticeable older teen magazines that feature the boys ever now and then. Then there are other magazines where their appearance is rather unexpected but very welcome. The most famous case is that of Rolling Stone, which had featured no more than a few paragraphs on the Jonas band previously. When the boys showed up on the cover of a recent issue, there was just about chaos in the streets. The intensity of the photo shoot brought more than one girl to hysterical giggles and fainting spells.
Television
As detailed in the Stages, there can be no doubt about when the brothers are on television. They have a tendency to be everywhere at once, providing no end of delight to teens with OJD.
Radio
Once your child has heard the boys on the radio, be on the look out for signs and symptoms. While the Jonas boys are good-looking, it’s not just their appearance that draws in converts. Their music has a very addicting sound that has caused many cases of OJD completely on its own.
Internet
This is a potent carrier of OJD, conversion lurking behind catchy website names that provide a wealth of information to anyone who wants it. A lot of teens are converted this way, already spending enough time on the internet to stumble across a site that could lead to contracting OJD.
Friends
This is the most influential of all carriers. All it takes is one friend with OJD to put your child at risk of getting it as well. Word of mouth is a powerful spreader of the disorder, and experts are researching whether it is possible for it to be in effect, airborne. At the rate it spreads between people, this seems logical. It would be unreasonable to try and censor who your child spends time with, so be especially careful to just monitor their behavior for symptoms.
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Conclusion
Treatment of OJD
Since the explosion of Obsessive Jonas Disorder, experts have been searching for a cure of some sort to relieve parents of the extreme symptoms exhibited in their teens. After countless experiments, they came up with the following answer regarding a cure to OJD:
There is none.
Sorry.
May we suggest a good pair of ear plugs and some aspirin?
Best of luck.