Saturday 19 October 2013

Birth of a teenager

Well shit. It' 12:26 in the afternoon and I just woke up.

I was sortof hoping this day wouldn't come. When I was small, I used to look on in disgust at my brother's teenage lifestyle. The drinking, the going out, the incredibly odd food choices and the lingering smell. More than anything I think what repulsed me was the hours he kept. He would go to bed sometime after two - in the morning! - and arise sometime after lunch the next day. For some reason, this was completely unacceptable to my pious ten year old self.

The smell is something I remember vividly. He, and all his things, and all his friends had this vivid smell. It was the smell of apathy. The smell of frequently going unwashed for days at a time. The smell of mess, of disorder, of chaos. The smell of freedom.

When my brother moved out and stopped being a teenager, I never thought I'd come into contact with the smell again.

Today, I woke up around lunch time after going to sleep sometime after two. And I realised...

I now have my own smell.

It's official. I'm a dirty, rotten, teenage dirtbag. Most people enter this phase some time in their early teens, perhaps thirteen or fifteen. But of course of entered it after my eighteenth birthday. I'm somewhat renowned for being late. Late to catch onto trends, late to class, late to get togethers that I organise....

Most of the bands I've recently gotten into were in the height of their fame a few decades ago. Bear in mind that I wasn't even alive a few decades ago.

I'm not sure what it is that makes me so late all the time. Perhaps it's the fact that I generally take too long to do anything. Or maybe the fact that in over eighteen years I still haven't quite grasped the art of time management.

Generally, I catch onto trends after they've gone full circle. They've been discovered, shared, and then disowned by hipsters as "too mainstream", and then disappeared into the abyss of obscurity. After about a decade, they are nostalgically revived, and after another twenty to fifty years they're back in fashion as "vintage" or "retro".

It's usually sometime after the trend has disappeared into the abyss of obscurity that I finally jump on the bandwagon. In fact, more often than not the trend may have been through two or more revivals and again disappeared into obscurity, before I jump onto the bandwagon.

It's safe to say that I'm late when it comes to jumping on bandwagons. I'm late for busses too. Somehow I never miss long distance trains or planes though.


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