Another advantage of childlessness is being able to avoid my progeny's teen years. Hormone-soaked viking raiders living in one's house would be bad enough, but knowing they are of my loins might be too much to handle. Where did these aliens come from? I imagine exasperated parents asking each other, mentally pointing the finger at the other.
On the other hand, because I'm not weighed down by questions of sex and drugs and car privileges, my observations of kids go uncorroborated. What I observe is a change of behaviour from my adolescence, and that is the rise of the hug. Teen and beyond kids greet each other with a hug thesedays, which strikes me as an oddity.
In my time, high school was about the least huggy place on the planet. Males called each other by their surname, and although sport and friendship mitigated a lot of rivalry, everyone knew their rank beneath the Alpha. Violence, at least the threat of it, wafted about the quadrangle like cigarette smoke from the lavatory stalls, so hugs really were out of the question.
Of course we wanted to hug the girls, and more besides, but that was way too gooey. Although I am six months late to the story, is it possible this is a permanent change or is it yet another dopey teen fad?
No comments:
Post a Comment