The Curious Lives of Teenagers

I'm a bit of an observer. Not in a creepy 'I like to watch' way, but more in a David Attenborough behavioural observation way.

I see a fair few high school kids every day, and I am constantly fascinated by their behaviour. While still being(pretty much) the same species as me, they are at the same time curiously odd creatures that I don't understand. Bit by bit I glean and compile information about them, to store away for future reference. You never know when you might have to actually interact with one of these beings, and it's helpful to know what your dealing with.

Anyway, one of these curious tidbits of knowledge that I have pieced together recently is to do with their strange means of greeting. For the girls, this means a heck of a lot of hugging. With the fellas, this means a lot of silly handshakes.

After long being baffled at the frequency of these activities (you saw each other at the end of school yesterday- is a hug really necessary?), my breakthrough came this morning when I considered my own distant childhood. Remember when you were a kid, and the days seemed so long? You'd just play and play and play all afternoon, and it seemed to go forever. You'd go to three friends' house, catch yabbies down at the creek, go to the shops for some red frogs, ride your bike.... all in a couple of hours.

Following this thinking, I have discovered that child hours are in fact different to adult ones. After several detailed scientific experiments and complicated trigonometry-ish mathsy calculations I found that one adult hour is the equivalent to roughly eleven kid ones.

So, is the penny dropping? You see, this is amazing stuff. It all makes things fall in to place. No wonder these girls give each other a massive hug after a long weekend- to them it's actually been practically an entire winter. No wonder the boys need to give each other another handshake after a free period- it's like they've not seen each other for a week.