Sue popped in this movie tonight, and as she so aptly put it, twas a teenage angst movie with Christian Slater (no it was not Three Heathers). Now I don't really like Christian Slater, but after about 45 minutes I marginally got sucked in.
The movie was about a high school kid who has his own little radio station in his bedroom. It was about angst (of course), corruption and of course painted the adult authorities as total assholes, except of course for the one understanding teacher (there always has to be one understanding adult in teenage angst movies don't you know).
It got me to thinking about why teenagers don't believe you when you tell them you understand what they are going through (this is btw, something I never tell teenagers because frankly they won't believe you anyway).
First off, teenagers don't believe you were ever a teenager. Secondly, if they are bright enough to believe you once were a teenager, they figure you don't remember what it was like.
Now, here's my take on all this: I don't think they are too far off the money on door number two. I think most adults don't remember what it was like. Oh yeah, they remember the hormonal raging and all that happy shit, but they don't really remember the real anguish most kids go through as they try to figure out how to transition from childhood into adulthood. They don't remember those feelings of total isolation and thinking you are the only one who has ever felt this way. They don't remember the excruciating pain of your first real broken heart. They can't go back and touch those feelings again.
I remember when Gina was seriously going into her teen years and I knew she was hurting deeply about things. I knew she did not feel I was necessarily the number one choice for talking about your feelings. I wanted so much to reach out to her, but I kind of knew deep inside she would refuse the offer to talk. I did reach out to her, I simply told her that if she ever needed to talk or even just needed a shoulder to cry on that I was there. She did reject the offer, but I also know that deep inside she at least felt like someone noticed and cared nonetheless.
She was around 14 then. The ages of 13, 14 and 15 must be the worst time in a person's life. You are no longer a child. People expect you to start acting more mature. But you are also not an adult and people still treat you like a child. You are seriously between a rock and a hard place. I honestly don't know how I managed to make it through my teen years without killing myself.
I made a promise to myself when I was around 5 years old. This promise was precipitated by an incident where an adult authority figure (all adults are authority figures to you at that age) at church who accused me of doing something I had not done. When I had the unmitigated gall to talk back and say I had not done said infraction, I was even more severely chastised. What I gleaned from that whole incident was that adults did really cruel things to children because they did not remember what being a child was like. No matter how right or even flawed my thinking might have been at that particular moment, I still formulated this promise to myself. I promised myself I would never forget what it was like being a child.
It's like at that exact moment in time, my mind encompassed this idea and held tight to it for all time. I have heard so many people say that they do not remember their childhood. I can't even fathom that. It's like I remember in detail everything that happened or how I felt or what I thought from the perspective of where I was in that particular time and space.
I told Gina that little story once. She was probably around 7 or 8 when I told her that story. I think she was probably somewhere around 11 when in conversation with me one day she said "You're right, you do remember what it is like to be a kid."
Last year, when I was in California for her wedding, she asked me to tell her stories about her childhood. I had said something about something that she had said or done when she was a kid and she said "I don't remember that." Then she told me that she didn't really remember much before age twelve. That just tore me to shreds. I couldn't comprehend that, especially after all the time we had spent when she was a kid having conversations about how hard it is to be a kid. I figured that like me, she would just automatically remember everything.
The truth is, as I grow slowly into (what shall I call it? my declining years? deepest reaches of middle age? not far from the beginning of my senior years?), I find that my early childhood is beginning to fade. Only the things that were dramatic emotionally for me still are vivid. Which is sad because, all those great stories I had going on in my head when I was young, those ones about being young that I wanted to eventually write down and turn into something note worthy, are lost to the recesses of my fading memory.
(heavy sigh)
Anyway, just some thoughts on teenagers, adults and the lament of the lost inner child in them.
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