I've finally reached the age where I can't quite figure out what is happening with the young people. On the one hand, you've got the whiney, self-absorbed, development-arrested types of kids crushed by a moon-sized sense of entitlement. There is some socially redeeming value there as without those kinds of people, there would be no reality television, but I shudder to think of what a life lived locked in that pattern of thinking will do to a person.
On the other hand, you've got the plugged-in, ambitious, adventure-seeking types who are out to push themselves beyond the limits of human endurance, right up to the blurry edge of life and death. There were some kids like that when I was growing up, but most of them faced down the black and empty eye sockets of the Grim Reaper by affecting a nonchalance toward posted speed limits or huffing compressed air computer cleaner.
These days, all the rage among the kids is to go all Magellan and sail alone around the world. Most of these who have attempted it are girls not old enough to drive.
The most obvious question: who took the shine of a good ole fashioned unwanted teenage pregnancy? Gestation takes about as long as sailing around the world, you get just about all the same amount of nausea and you're just as likely to be the subject of idle talk in the streets and alleyways of your home town. You still get that whiff of adult independence and cheaply won notoriety, but if statistics are to be believed, the threat from Somali pirates to pregnant American teenage girls is almost negligible. Or at least well within the range of acceptable losses.
Global circumnavigation. How does a fourteen year old conceive of such a thing? I'm trying to remember what my greatest ambition at 14 was and I'm pretty sure it was figuring out the whole walking-with-a-boner-while-wearing-sweatpants conundrum that has plagued man since the invention of the elastic waistband.
But I guess I see the appeal. We still remember the name Magellan today, don't we? They'll probably be OK so long as they have the requisite training and avoid pissing off the wrong Filipinos.
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4 comments:
yeah, when I was 14 I'm pretty sure I was trying to figure out how to make enough money to buy a new stereo. Or else how to get out of having to do math homework.
strangely enough, i have no memories, none at all, of SEEING all these be-sweatpantsed boys with boners at my high school. from what i hear, high school boys did nothing BUT try to hide boners while they were at school. and clearly, they succeeded, because *I* never noticed....
or perhaps i went to a school full of eunuchs. it wouldn't surprise me.
You were clearly preoccupied with the stereo thing. Or it may be your perception was numbed by ubiquity.
I was happily reading along, mindlessly bobbing my head, until you mentioned Magellan. Of all the overrated renaissance explorers, he takes the cake. First to circumnavigate the globe? My ass! Sure, a couple dozen members of his expedition made it (and where are their names, hmmm?), but he bought the farm in the Phillipines. It's like if one of these circumnavigating brats died half way around the world, but we give them credit because their headlice survived the journey.
Bah!
Your racist attitude toward the Portuguese is duly noted. Lusophobia is unbecoming, sir. Unbecoming indeed.
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