The bad old days - T(w)eens

There is some things certain to be common between 'old days' and 'new days' in the teens, I suppose. Adults generally seem to make no sense; your peers are wiser than Socrates; the music you love is invariably seen as cacophony by your parents and theirs sound like funereal dirges to you; in short, adults think you have no sense and you return the compliment in spades. So, yes, all of this was just about the same then as now.

There is one certain advantage that the 'new' days have over the old. The advent of Infotech, smartphones and all most certainly ensured that you were more CONFIDENT about knowing more than the previous generation. We preferred to think so but the lack of conclusive proof left a certain sediment of doubt, the niggling possibility that we were only fooling ourselves in thinking so. Today, though...though, how long it will last no-one knows. Just as my generation had the curse of feeling inferior to the parents in childhood and to children in adulthood, the current generation may well have the blessing of feeling superior to their parents AND their children, if technology does not keep changing lives at the same pace.

But, I have the joy of knowing that in one thing at least we were better off. After all, we only had to juggle with a handful of friends and worry about the 'He likes me, he likes me not' and generally feeling unwanted and unloved. This generation...If I had been born in this one, my spirits would fly and sink (generally sink) with each FB post, with each tweet. (I put up that pic on me eating breakfast and only 24 Likes? Have people not seen it or is it that lesser people like me? AND that there stupid idiot puts up the pic of his bike and he gets 103 Likes, at the same time! So people do not like me! Despair!) Thank God!

AND this pressure of getting girl-friends/boy-friends! It was such a pain in my times, this boy and girl thing. Up to a point, when you actually hated girls, everyone pushed you into their company. Why teacher even used to punish you for talking in class by asking you to sit between girls, when you washed your hands if you even touched a girl's desk accidentally. (What the girls did to deserve having your smelly self sitting in their midst, no-one said). AND then you discover that girls are strangely attractive creatures and, presto, everything changes. NOW the adults are on your case if you talk to girls for any length of time and if, by chance, you started trying out becoming a Shelley by writing to them, you were liable to suspension and worse. (Those were the 'Spare the rod and spoil the child' days, so...) Is it a wonder that we thought of adults as strangely contrary, slightly mad creatures who wanted you to do only what you do not want to do?

This generation probably has it better. But, for me, probably mine suited better. I mean, getting a FRIEND was difficult enough for me. Getting a GIRL-FRIEND? If it had not existed, any girl I asked would have probably invented that phrase, "If you were the last man on Earth, I would probably prefer a monkey". So, I was safe in my times since hardly ANYONE had a girl-friend and the ones who did were considered the 'bad boys' anyway. Now...that word 'Loser'...it is not the most musical of words to hear when it is applied to you. So...

So, yes, ANY times are enjoyable to someone or the other and NOT to someone else.

AND, of course, the old days are ALWAYS good to those for whom they are the 'old days' of their OWN life!