Adolescence the second time around

You know what’s really hard? Adolescence the second time around.

I know what you’re thinking, you didn’t even know that you could go through adolescence a second time, mainly because it only happens to a damaged unique and particularly neurotic type of person. The type of person who still has issues around their own teenage years, the person who hasn’t yet slaughtered all their demons and come out triumphantly on the other side with the word ‘adult’ stamped on their soul.

My very amateur psychology around this field that I am sure I am making up, says that when you have issues with your own teenage years and then your child becomes a teenager you are faced with all your demons again. And you relive them without the aid of Passion Pop, $2 bankies* and other cheap and nasty stimulants that got you through the first time.

I’ve been dealing with this for about a year now and making very little progress. But yesterday I heard something and today I put it into place and I think I am making some headway.

Something I heard

Yesterday I was watching morning TV because you get to do that when you are writing on current affairs and topical issues for a living (also because I am lazy and sometimes write on my bed). I was watching Channel 10 and they were talking about a man who had approached the person that bullied him 40 years ago at school. Jamila Rizvi, who I used to work with, was on the panel and she said something which riled me furiously at the time. I can’t quote her directly but it was something along the lines of ‘why would you let something worry you after all those years’. She talked about herself being a bully at school and being bullied at school like it was teasing not bullying and I hope am sure that’s what she meant. Because bullying is destructive and it affects every thing that you do for the rest of your life. Bullying is not something you shrug off. Bullying is like a wave on a rock – it shapes and forms that rock, it changes the shape of it forever, even if that rock goes on to form part of the most majestic castle in later life – it’s core is ever altered.

Putting it into place

Today my son left to go on a holiday/camp type thing. He is off with hundreds of other kids to a Sports Carnival in Melbourne where they will play all day and party all night. The camps been running for decades and there is not a person who hasn’t spoken of it with the highest form of adoration. Apparently it’s epic. The kids make friends with other children from all over Australia and relationships are forged for life. Little Pencil was possibly the most excited human being on the planet going off to Melbourne for a week to be billeted in a stranger’s home to meet new friends, play with old friends and just be a teenager with other teenagers for days on end. Seriously the child woke up with laughter erupting through his pores this morning, he was that excited.
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Me. I was er, also excited (where “also excited” means “not at all excited”).

I took him to the airport with a smile plastered on my face although, in truth I was happy because his excitement was infectious, it’s hard to be anxious or worried when your child is that happy. As we entered the airport I saw two boys men that I had been at school with, they live here now and have kids Little Pencil’s age. My stomach lurched and I wanted to tell Little Pencil not to worry, I wanted to protect him from these “boys” who had not been on my side when I was at school. But he wasn’t worried. He knew the kids, he sauntered up to them with his 13-year old swagger and “tuned” them hello.

I thought about Jamila’s words from the TV the day before. I thought about what Mr Pencil would say to me. It has been 30 years since I finished school (gulp!). I was thinking about these men as if they were still 17. As if they hadn’t had a full 30 years of life in which they had studied, worked, got married, had children, experienced sadness, happiness, fear, jealousy, triumph and every other emotion in the interim. I was hanging on to my teenage years, my emotion of 30 years ago, I was seeing these people as if I was stuck in 1985 and I was transferring that emotion on to my son.

But he wasn’t taking it on because it has no basis in today’s reality. It makes no sense to anyone but me.

When I was Little Pencil’s age I could think of nothing worse than going to stay in someone else’s house in a different State for a week. Add to that sports all day and parties with all those people all night and I would have clung on to home with every fibre of my being. When I said goodbye to him at the airport this morning he asked me why I was still there. He is not me. He doesn’t have my issues, those belong to me to deal with and get rid of. He is one of those people. Those carefree, happy, teenagers.

I am slowly learning.

Little Pencil is a damn good teacher.

*this may be a South African er, um, drug reference…..