‘But Everyone Else Has Better Clothes!’: The Teen Who Roasted His Mom on a Clay Tablet

Discovered in the ruins of ancient Larsa, a major city of ancient Babylon, and now housed in the Louvre Museum, a clay tablet holds history’s first recorded letter of complaint. Around 3,800 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia, a boy named Iddin-Sin wrote a letter that might just make him the first recorded example of a teenager with entitlement issues. His letter wasn’t a sweet note to check in with his mother, Zinu, or to tell her how much he missed her while at boarding school. No, this was a full-on complaint about—wait for it—his clothes.

Imagine the scene: Iddin-Sin, the privileged son of an upper-class family in Larsa, sitting in his boarding school, carefully etching his frustrations into clay. “From year to year, the gentlemen’s clothes get better,” he grumbled, “but mine? They get worse!” The nerve of it! This was a kid already receiving an elite education at a scribal school, surrounded by wealth and opportunity, yet he was utterly devastated that his wardrobe wasn’t as flashy as his classmates’. To drive the point home, he even called out another boy, the son of his father’s assistant, for having two shiny new outfits. “And me? Nothing!” Oh, the tragedy.

But it didn’t stop there. Iddin-Sin went on to accuse his mother of hoarding wealth while he, her poor, neglected son, suffered. “You’ve become rich,” he claimed, “but look at me!” He wasn’t asking for love or attention—just better clothes. And if you think he softened the blow with kind words, think again. This kid meant business, mixing passive-aggressive remarks with outright guilt trips.

It’s both funny and oddly relatable. While the specifics have changed—modern kids might whine about smartphones or sneakers—the essence of teenage entitlement remains timeless. Sorry, Iddin-Sin, but no matter how fancy your clay tablet was, your mom Zinu probably rolled her eyes and sighed, “Kids these days.”