Wasted youth. A topic I am sad to say, I do not really have much licence to comment on. In order to paint a picture of this topic, I turned to the most debauched people I know: my housemates. The true spirit of Deionises flows through their veins, either that or endorphins, so who else better to tell me what wasted youth is?
Over the course of knowing them, they have regaled me with stories of unspeakable darkness and personal destruction. One contingent of my house once fell asleep in the depths of winter, in the snow, down a dark ally due to a culmination of substances. Eventually he was found by a passer by who mistook him for a dead body. After the police and ambulances arrived, he was promptly taken to get his stomach pumped. To celebrate the fact that he was not in fact dead, he repeated this act the following night, this time passing out in a grave yard, in the snow. Another strapped coke bottles filled with petrol to a firework. Why? “I liked explosions” was the answer. Due to the added weight, it veered off, smashing into his parents’ living room. Needless to say the damage inflicted was enough for him to try and run away to Southampton. ( I have no idea why Southampton.) Clearly I am in the presence professionals!
The descriptions of wasted youth perpetually brought up when I quiz these lords of debauchery on the topic of wasted youth are pikey teens loitering outside off-licences, guzzling down flagons of ‘White Ace’, burnouts smoking mindmelting skunk in their colleges,in only the most dank and decrepit toilets that no sober mind would enter, or the individual rebel, the ultimate outsider, who has read ‘the basket ball diaries’ one too many times and has decided that’s the life for them.
True, these are all what we would classically define as wasted youth, decades of film and media since the nineteen fifties, since the emergence of the ‘teenager’ have reinforced that drinking, drug taking, sex and moving in societies outside the status quo are all sure ways to ‘waste’ your youth. Yet, at the risk of sounding contrary, I do not believe that these pictures of wasted youth are correct.
To prove my point I shall tell you the trials and tribulations of my youth: Nothing happened. My youth was horrifically normal. I turned up for school, studied and got OK grades. Your typical middle class, middle of the road kid. I never really pushed boundaries because why should I? Its bad to push boundaries and its far safer at home than at a dangerous party where bigger boys are taking (duh duh duuuuuuh)…DRUGS! I tried to throw away my youth; once when I hung around some punks that used to sniff glue. (I know, painfully cliché) This was to be my road to a ramshackle life! But no. I was too much of a pussy to keep it up. I was going to work hard. I was going to avoid trouble. I was going to achieve.
I can hear your internal monolog; “ Hang on, what was the point of this description of youth? You sound like a little prick that pussied out on his adolescent years! Hardly Jack Kerouac were you?” Well firstly, blow me. Secondly That is my point. I wasted my youth. These other kids who spent the best years of their lives off their faces on chemicals stolen from chemistry class, telling adults to go fuck themselves weren’t wasting their youths, they were embracing it!
Looking back I now realise how pointless most exams I took actually were, how unnecessary most of school is and I now realise that my parents lied about pretty much everything to do with drugs, drink and sex, or they just said nothing at all. The amount of time I wasted in GCSE home economics or D.T boggle my mind now. What possessed me to stay? I should have been doing what all the smart kids were doing: Bunking off. I should have been down the park drinking pure ethanol, while fingering a girl with one hand and happy slapping a small child with the other, of course with my hood up! Call me crude all you want, I would have been having fun, embracing my youth. In stead I was too busy ‘achieving’.
Now I’m not saying that all adolescents should pick up a crack pipe and disregard education. I don’t want a society of junkies, after all, zombie films creep me out. What I am saying is all I got out of my youth was a few mediocre A-levels. I can’t regale you with stories of coke and sex parties. I cant tell you of times I almost got busted by the police for anything. The first time I got drunk was when I was seventeen, only leaving a meagre year of underage drinking. Pretty poor I know. I can’t say I grabbed my youth with any vigour, in fact I threw it away. I wasted it. I never really lived in my youth, I merely existed.
I think it is important to experiment while your still young. Upon leaving home and entering the unforgiving bright lights of London I had no idea where to stop with indulgences, because I had never really indulged in anything leading up to this point and this can be dangerous. I’ve had my fingers burnt a lot of times because I am still learning. I wasted my youth as well as opportunities to learn life lessons.
So I say to the youth of tomorrow, before it is too late, go out! Explore! Push boundaries! If you don’t you are in severe danger of wasting your youth
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