Comments on: Embrace your inner adolescent

By: it’s louder in your head. - the point.

it’s louder in your head. - the point. — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 20:07:44 +0000

[…] well, for some reason, i’ve been thinking about this a lot. especially after chutney wrote this post about embracing adolescence. and it made me think of this episode of my so-called life (one of the greatest TV shows of all time) where angela (claire danes’ character) talks about how sometimes in a conversation you say the wrong thing…or what seems like the wrong thing…and it repeats over and over again in your head. it’s all you can hear. and you only think of the right thing to say in the instant that it’s not possible anymore. or maybe a day or a year later. that totally happens to me. […]

By: fouralarmfire

fouralarmfire — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 20:52:07 +0000

and that there was less clearasil involved.

actually, i totally embrace my inner adolescent, and i usually regret it after i can tell i hurt somebody’s feelings with a sarcastic comment that crosses my lips before i think about it. i also think there is more evidence that other people do too than we like to admit. i mean, why else would every woman be wearing those hideous “gaucho” shorts that look horrific on everyone?

i think the reason adolescentlike doesn’t exist is that it’s messy, and that we don’t ever grow out of it, we just learn to control it. “growing up” = getting a filter. it’s like being a recovering alcoholic. adolescence is still there in our hearts; we just don’t act it out everyday.

the problem is, as you pointed out, my dear chutney, there are parts of adolescence that are gloriously beautiful: the overactive sense of justice, the note-passing, the sense that everything is the worst thing that ever happened to anybody ever. the protest dances.

hi, my name is 4alarm, and i’m a recovering adolescent.

By: Kermit_Is

Kermit_Is — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 05:25:21 +0000

Nicely done. I certainly have never thought about adolescence as something to be cherished, so I’ll have to give it some thought.

Perhaps the problem is not just that we’re embarassed, but also that some of us don’t particularly like who we were then. I know that I regret some of the things I said and did and how I treated other people. Then, too, there were the 7:30 AM classes, the acne, the Algebra II. Definitely some things I’d like to block out. And I’d take the ignorant self-confidence of 10 or the slightly more seasoned self-confidence of 30 over the confusion of 12-25 any day.

Then again, there’s something to be said for the liminal experience. I just wish it weren’t so protracted.