Confidential to the little twerps upstairs of the St. Vincent’s Chemist: You ‘uns are lucky I wasn’t there, or there would have been more than just Branston pickle and mayonnaise flying. Watch your backs.
In the Spring a young Glaswegian’s fancy, turns to thoughts of generalized mayhem. These poor kids have to go to school until July sometime (!) but recent bank holidays and early dismissals are giving quite a few of them long stretches of gloriously unsupervised time, and right now it seems they’re freakin’ everywhere.
Because our flat is now twice over a building site, the destruction is drawing the little heathens like moths to candlelight. After the construction crew knocks off, they come over to have a squint at the ripped up girders and piles of castoff bricks. They root around in the piles of debris for what they can find — to throw from balconies or fling from overpasses at cars. Friday last the police were by, rooting through the debris at the half-demolished bowling alley and collecting the leftover pins and balls (after forcibly relieving them from a group of kids who were about twelve) — which make quite handy weapons. Sunday night, three little girls, maybe about age eleven, kicked apart a desk, ripped open a box of box of paper cups and flung them to the wind — just as a playtime activity.
It seems the kids I watch here are weirdly fond of unfocused destruction. Like the thing with the throwing trash food at strangers thing, or, like when G. got shot by that “Ned” as he called him, with the pellet gun, kids just seem to have time on their hands and think, “Oh, gee, what if we –?” and off they go.
I think what ticks me off about this is how old it makes me feel. Isn’t it Total Fogey to immediately say, “Sheesh, was I that obnoxious/rude/insert-pejorative-adjective-here when I was that age?” And normally the answer is an unqualified “YES,” because many people have nostalgic watercolored blindfolds when it comes to their own misspent youth (and the more in denial you are about how you ACTUALLY were, the OLDER you are, it seems.) But I know — short of stomping on the painting I received when I was five years old and had asked for a doll (Looooong story, suffice it to say it was some church lady who wanted me to Grow Up To Be A Lady — see how well THAT worked?), I know I wasn’t that destructive. It has nothing to do with being a girl — I bashed up my friend Amy’s truck once because she was annoying me (it was an old and already dented truck) (And trust me. Amy? Hellaciously annoying). I could and can DO destructive. But… not without a reason. Usually.
This isn’t to say that short summer-vacationing American nitwits aren’t as bad — by no means. I think the thing is that these kids are… Caucasian. Rosy-cheeked, fair-haired smiling little hooligans. And I keep asking myself why this gives me pause. Have I bought into the idea that Where There Is Mayhem, There Is Brown? (And if so, way to sell out yourself, self.) I don’t know — maybe it’s just harder for me, anyway, to determine class in this country — these kids are pretty well dressed and … I don’t know, they just don’t look like they’re going to be hefting rotted mayonnaise over a balcony at you anytime soon. They just look like… normal kids.
In more news, Little Brother (NOT the book, although that might involve less giggling) is “talking to a girl.” And when I asked him, “Talking? And then what do you do?” he said, “I don’t know!” and giggled. Again
Sixteen. And can’t get through a sentence about her without laughing.
He’s in Crushus Majorus, and the apocalypse has come.
*sigh* Guess the days of the highlight of his summer being a trip to the aquarium with his sister are over…
My childhood here in Derry was spent mostly gathering head injuries of one sort or another. Mainly yeah, I remember childhood as a long sequence of stout bangs on the head, a sort of painful flick-book of flashing images where I’m slightly taller in each one until, wham, I’m some sort of spotty prototype of my adult self and I’m banging my head on low doorways.
We were always getting into trouble, me and the boys. Nothing major, and nothing terribly destructive: we were just explorers and experimenters by nature, during a time when the town was growing in every direction from where we lived. Construction sites ahoy. And those sites were often empty through the winter months; they became magical winter wonderlands, full of skeletal houses to explore and discover the dirty newspapers with all the boobies that the builders stashed there. We took those and stashed them in a bit of pipe, bunged up at both ends, buried out in one of the accidental strips of forest that ran near our houses. Twelve, thirteen years old, and we were already twisted little adult publication squirrels.
Also, bikes. We had bikes. And the construction sites had huge mounds of displaced earth that sat for months and years at a time. More head injuries.
But yeah, it seems like a nasty destructive streak has gripped children today. Children these days seem to be dirty little vandals by default. And they’re bored, all so terribly bored, because they were never shown that they had imaginations, and were never told that the final responsibility for being entertained and enjoying life lies with themselves.
We played in great dry sewer pipes that ran under the new housing developments. We played ‘army’, building huts out of clods of grass and sheets of corrugated iron and chucking stones at each other from opposite ends of the field beside where I lived (more head injuries.) We were chased by foremen, scaling fences (and once, just once, kicking my way through a plywood fence that I couldn’t climb over…)
But we had fun. Summers lasted forever. We were made of some sort of fast-healing rubber, bounced back from everything. And we didn’t make a point of going around breaking stuff, or kicking pensioners to death, or anything like that.
My childhood here in Derry was spent mostly gathering head injuries of one sort or another. Mainly yeah, I remember childhood as a long sequence of stout bangs on the head, a sort of painful flick-book of flashing images where I’m slightly taller in each one until, wham, I’m some sort of spotty prototype of my adult self and I’m banging my head on low doorways.We were always getting into trouble, me and the boys. Nothing major, and nothing terribly destructive: we were just explorers and experimenters by nature, during a time when the town was growing in every direction from where we lived. Construction sites ahoy. And those sites were often empty through the winter months; they became magical winter wonderlands, full of skeletal houses to explore and discover the dirty newspapers with all the boobies that the builders stashed there. We took those and stashed them in a bit of pipe, bunged up at both ends, buried out in one of the accidental strips of forest that ran near our houses. Twelve, thirteen years old, and we were already twisted little adult publication squirrels.Also, bikes. We had bikes. And the construction sites had huge mounds of displaced earth that sat for months and years at a time. More head injuries.But yeah, it seems like a nasty destructive streak has gripped children today. Children these days seem to be dirty little vandals by default. And they’re bored, all so terribly bored, because they were never shown that they had imaginations, and were never told that the final responsibility for being entertained and enjoying life lies with themselves. We played in great dry sewer pipes that ran under the new housing developments. We played ‘army’, building huts out of clods of grass and sheets of corrugated iron and chucking stones at each other from opposite ends of the field beside where I lived (more head injuries.) We were chased by foremen, scaling fences (and once, just once, kicking my way through a plywood fence that I couldn’t climb over…)But we had fun. Summers lasted forever. We were made of some sort of fast-healing rubber, bounced back from everything. And we didn’t make a point of going around breaking stuff, or kicking pensioners to death, or anything like that.
My childhood here in Derry was spent mostly gathering head injuries of one sort or another. Mainly yeah, I remember childhood as a long sequence of stout bangs on the head, a sort of painful flick-book of flashing images where I’m slightly taller in each one until, wham, I’m some sort of spotty prototype of my adult self and I’m banging my head on low doorways.
We were always getting into trouble, me and the boys. Nothing major, and nothing terribly destructive: we were just explorers and experimenters by nature, during a time when the town was growing in every direction from where we lived. Construction sites ahoy. And those sites were often empty through the winter months; they became magical winter wonderlands, full of skeletal houses to explore and discover the dirty newspapers with all the boobies that the builders stashed there. We took those and stashed them in a bit of pipe, bunged up at both ends, buried out in one of the accidental strips of forest that ran near our houses. Twelve, thirteen years old, and we were already twisted little adult publication squirrels.
Also, bikes. We had bikes. And the construction sites had huge mounds of displaced earth that sat for months and years at a time. More head injuries.
But yeah, it seems like a nasty destructive streak has gripped children today. Children these days seem to be dirty little vandals by default. And they’re bored, all so terribly bored, because they were never shown that they had imaginations, and were never told that the final responsibility for being entertained and enjoying life lies with themselves.
We played in great dry sewer pipes that ran under the new housing developments. We played ‘army’, building huts out of clods of grass and sheets of corrugated iron and chucking stones at each other from opposite ends of the field beside where I lived (more head injuries.) We were chased by foremen, scaling fences (and once, just once, kicking my way through a plywood fence that I couldn’t climb over…)
But we had fun. Summers lasted forever. We were made of some sort of fast-healing rubber, bounced back from everything. And we didn’t make a point of going around breaking stuff, or kicking pensioners to death, or anything like that.