Teenage Girls

I was sitting on the Town Hall steps yesterday afternoon, waiting for a friend, when a group of teenage girls stumbled along. They were about fourteen, I guess, and were dressed pretty regularly. Pink slip on shoes. Roxy jumpers. Silly looking jeans. Fairly run of the mill. They looked like they would still have a bunch of teddy bears sitting on their beds, and have the same cutesy curtains on their bedroom windows that they've had since childhood. They would probably have something like 'I luv Ryan, True luv 4eva' scratched into their desks somewhere.

But their behaviour was completely at odds with how they looked. Think of the most sweary word you can-- that's what they were calling each other every two seconds. They were pushing each other around, and screaming at each other, right into each other's faces. It was hard to know if they were joking, or if they were about to have a scrap. They were all staggering about, and smoking, and carrying on like galahs.

I watched one girl scream at her 'friend' and then go off by herself in a huff. She then took out of her handbag one of those silver bags that cask wine comes in-- what we used to call 'goon'. And she sat down on the ground, with a sour little expression on her face and proceeded to drink the 'goon', straight from the source.

The way she was slurping away, all cranky and messy, reminded me straight away of some sulky little toddler, festering in their dirty nappy, sucking on their bottle and chucking a tanty. And I realised with an epiphany what the problem was here.

Someone had accidentally pressed chapter skip on these girls. They had gone suddenly from three year olds, to fourteen year olds, without warning, and nobody had shown them how to behave in those years they had skipped. Though they were in such a hurry to grow up, they had remained babies.

I then had two thoughts shoot through my brain in quick succession, one of great relief, and one that sent a chill of terror through me. The first was a great sigh of relief to think, thank goodness those gnarly teenage years are behind me. And the second was, oh man-- I have a daughter..