You don't remember what it was like to be my age!

Well, all those new developments allow for new and exciting problems.

...eventually, we will reach a maximum entropy state where nobody has their own socks or underwear, or knows who to ask to get them back.

I quite literally don't remember what it was like to be your age.

There's nearly one full year (I was... 15?) of which I have no clear memories. No, it's worse than that. There are very few documents on my computer created or edited during that year, nor much from that year in any of my files. There's no way for me to track down what I was actually doing that year. My parents have told me very little about it apart from "you were very sick."

<.<

I'm not sure how I'd relate to my kids if by some miracle someone managed to copulate with me. By all accounts I did none of the typical teenager things apart from getting into arguments with my parents. I'm already hard pressed to understand my 14-year-old sibling, who acts and thinks nothing like I did.

I have devised a most marvelous signature, which this signature line is too narrow to contain.

In retrospect, I wish I had just been a normal teenager. I wish I'd went out and partied, drank, and fucked a bunch of cheerleaders, instead of dating a crazy loner girl and a shallow soccer girl as the sum of my relationships as a teenager. Life would be so much simpler.

All I did was smoke weed and balance working fast food and going to high school.

Hm. My thing with my mum isn't 'you don't remember what it's like to be a teen' it's 'you don't know what it's like to be handicapped.' Typically this is in regards to my difficulties at school.

edited 19th Jan '11 12:11:44 PM by Diamonnes

My name is Cu Chulainn. Beside the raging sea I am left to moan. Sorrow I am, for I brought down my only son.

Perhaps it's them feeling that they know the solutions to what you're going through, and being impatient with your not knowing them yet?

I didn't have a rough puberty. In fact, my mood swings/depression peaked at 12 because of bad schooling, and then my parents started homeschooling me and I started steadily getting happier and more stable. As far as I can tell, my age had absolutely nothing to do with how I felt, it was all down to my environment.

I'm also asexual, which certainly made things simpler.

I can relate to D Jay 32's comment that most teens have no idea how good they have it (even though I know my life's way happier than his). I've gotten mad at my younger brother for wailing loudly about minor inconveniences, when I only act that way during major flashbacks. (Of course, part of my annoyance is auditory hypersensitivity - when he wails, he causes me pain.)

If I'm asking for advice on a story idea, don't tell me it can't be done.

Being a teenager sucks because you are smart enough to know you're being stupid (and incredibly impuslive) yet not smart enough or savvy enough to do antyhing about it.

'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?

My parents used to think I was being that sort of bratty irritating shallow person when they took away internet privileges as punishment for stupid things and I'd freak out.

I had almost no friends at school I could count on  ^*

- my life was online, talking to people across the country (and world) who really understood me. I was depressed and suicidal thanks to abusive parenting - without internet all I could do was lay in bed trying to sleep thinking about what a horrible worthless person I was and how I wished I could just vanish off the face of the earth so I could stop making mistakes.

My parents took me to therapists. The therapists listened to what I had to say then told my parents I had an unhealthy fixation with the internet, and told ME that "a real friend is someone whose phone number you memorized" and therefore the only support system I had was lies that meant I was sick somehow.

So yeah, I can safely say they did *not* understand me or what it was like to be me. But I don't think it was due to the age gap so much as utterly refusing to see what kind of a person I was (I wasn't particularly shallow or petty; I had always been a deep thinker and preferred to read books than go shopping). I would honestly educate myself about a subject only to be told I obviously don't know anything and anything I say isn't important because I'm a child and therefore subhuman.

ETA: Reading back over this it sounds like I have blinders on or something. Let me add that it's not that I didn't do or say some of the stupidest things - I mostly lacked the knowledge of how to handle difficult social situations and would often make a mess of things, offend people on accident, accidentally say something rude, and when it came to sex I was embarrassingly juvenile about the entire subject, bursting into giggles at mention of the word "hormones" in certain contexts. My early romantic relationships were copied right out of bad romance novels, complete with the whole "We're soulmates who share a bond that can never be broken!" type passionate statements after dating a week or two. I was, in essence, teenage and juvenile, just not in certain aspects such as caring overmuch about my looks or using text-speak to write papers or anything like that.

edited 21st Jan '11 6:28:54 AM by Yamikuronue

BTW, I'm a chick.

I can sort of relate to that; while I had friends at high school, it wasn't until Uni I had those sort of trusted, dependent friends.

...Most of whom I met through the university's geeky clubs, in which we used to talk about sci-fi and fantasy and fandom and all the things I used to talk about online with. Funny, that.

But that's a technological generation gap there. Which is a major difference between current and previous generations of adolescents. Just as the introduction of television, or cars would have been to previous generations.

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Actually teenagers got to use cars really progressively. Originally Cars weren't for teenagers to use, that's for sure, they were too damn expensive.

Hehe, if they still built the Ford-T it might cost like 10$ nowadays...

'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?

I didn't have my own car - i had to beg borrow or steal from my parents. No luck, then I got to ride the bus. More often than not, I'd get use of a vehicle for the weekend, and I thought that was fair enough.

As teenaged life for me was when the internet was still fairly new (AOL 3.0), it wasn't something that I had become attached to, so I can sort of see how a parent today might not grasp how important friends on the Net can become.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

I think, to some degree, that we can't look back on our own teenage years in the same way that teenagers in the middle of it can. The shifts of puberty literally affect brain function.

That said, I know I had mood shifts, as well as frequent bouts of depression and more than one time where I held a knife and considered suicide. (Thankfully, I was always too chicken and afraid of pain to actually do anything.) My friendships and personal relationships went through ups and downs, and after my junior year when I got ahold of myself my friendships got better. (Too bad it still took me until after graduating high school to get better at dating. )

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

That's not called "chicken", that's called "having clear priorities". Whenever someone suggests something insane and I flat-out refuse and they come with a variation of "What's the matter, chicken?" I say "Well excuse me if I value my personal safety more than whatever opinion you may have of me." Or, functionally euivalent, "You, dude, are a moron, and I am not. You go try it, but I ain't taking no stupid risks for no reason other than "X will despise me". Now go die, I'll cheer from the sides". That usually shuts them up.

edited 22nd Jan '11 8:37:03 AM by RawPower

'''YOU SEE THIS DOG I'M PETTING? THAT WAS COURAGE WOLF.Cute, isn't he?