Experiences You Wish You Had at Age 16

[Maiira]

@Roderick_Femm

As long as we’re wishing:

I wish I could have been 16 in 1995 instead of in 1965, where it might have been possible to come out and have a real gay relationship, with puppy love and teenage heartbreak and all that good stuff.

Alternatively, I wish some nice, kind, sincere, slightly older person would have taken me under his wing and taught me that what I felt was not depraved or sick, and that I wasn’t alone in having those feelings.

Instead, left to my own devices and deeply closeted, I ended up with a dichotomy between sex and love that I carry still.
Roddy

This saddens me a lot. I’m sorry, Roderick. Also hugs

As for me…

I don’t wish I’d had more sex, but I wish I’d masturbated more. I never felt the urge to, really, so I never experimented, and didn’t get to know my body. I’m more familiar and comfortable with it now, and I know generally what I’m doing, but my sex life in college was damn frustrating. Dudes would be trying to pleasure me, and I wouldn’t be able to guide them. They’d have to figure it out on their own, which usually met with failure.

I also wish I’d procrastinated less. Still wish that, actually.

[Rachellelogram]

I wish I wouldn’t have been such a goody two shoes. My mom didn’t trust me at all and regularly accused me of sneaking out when in reality I never actually did it or considered doing it. Not even once. What a waste. My entire life, my relationship with her consisted of her moving the goalposts further and further forward. It ended up making me into a high achiever (type A+++ personality) in high school/early college, but I crashed and burned out around age 21 and have been strictly laid-back (type B) ever since. I guess I wish I had been more laid back, but that goes back to changing my parents and that’s beyond the scope of the OP’s question.

I also wish I’d had the courage to tell someone about being sexually abused in my tween years, and gotten some therapy for that. 16 would have been a good time.

[athelas]

Of course the folks who erred in the opposite direction, and were too wild in their youth, are unlikely to be among the educated, relatively well-off group that posts on internet message boards

[Sunspace]

I’m sorry to hear what you’ve gone through, Roderick Femm. Even being suspected of being gay was bad when I was a kid. Yet your post inspires mine.

Apart from the ‘sex’ desire–sixteen-year-olds are basically walking bags of hormones, so that’s practically a given–there are more subtle things I wish I’d had.

When I turned 16, I was just about to start Grade 12 (August 1979). I remember Grade 12 as being fairly decent, actually, at least compared to what went before. I was not popular and didn’t get dates, but I was not overtly bullied either. During Grade 12, I took English, French, German, drafting, history, math, chemistry, and art. I had a few good friends, and rode my bike out to visit their homes. I had a crush on a couple of girls, did a lot of art, and designed houses.

I did not yet know how to drive, mostly because when I took Driver’s Ed that year, the instructor told the first student in the first in-car lesson to turn onto the freeway at dusk when it was his first time in the car… scared me silly. Much later, I learned to drive through a professional school.

Family life? My parents had divorced the year before, but things were settling down in terms of living arrangements. Mom and I had moved to the co-op where I would live until I went to university and moved out. I chose to continue going to the same school even though it was now across town and its rival was just down the street; things had definitely improved from the hell years.

However, a single mom working at the Ministry didn’t make enough to send me on any fancy trips either, so I never got to go to England, Cuba, Spain, or any of the other places students went to each year. I knew nothing of programs like Katimavik or the Working Holidaymakers or even WWOOF.

I was taking French and German–I loved languages, even though they were difficult–but I knew nothing of any immersion programs that might have been available. I just assumed such things weren’t for me. I was fascinated by the appropriate-technology movement I read of in books from California, but California was a long way away and I just assumed I couldn’t get there. I never even tried to figure out a way.

I lived in a strangely-blinkered world where I believed I was powerless, where I assumed I had no chance. I thought this was normal. This is probably the most pernicious effect of the bullying I went through from kindergarten up intil the end of Grade 9, and I fight it every day even now.

A few years ago, I visited my cousins’ place. These are the Swedish cousins, all blond(e) and good-looking and sociable. The house had been their summer cottage before it was winterized, and the bathroom still had the summer graffitti scrawled by the kids when they were in high school, not long before. It spoke of parties and friendships and long summer evenings by the dock. Looking at my cousin’s room, I saw the trophies, the pictures, the high school memories. With a shock, I realized that I was seeing what it was like to be one of the popular kids, one of the socially-successful. And it rocketed me back to my memories of high school.

I think that, if I could go back there and talk to myself, I’d try to instil some kind of inner fire, some kind of confidence, that would move me to try to make things happen. I’d give myself social training. I’d check for things like what we now call face blindness and Asperger’s syndrome. (Did we even know about that then?) It would be like that ‘it gets better’ campaign for gays and lesbians in high school, but with a slightly-different focus.

Confidence is born of small successful steps, each building on the one before. This is the way we teach things. But some things are not taught explicitly to every teenager, and if you miss them, there’s a lot of catching up to do later in life. Which I have done. (At age 47, I am now a perfectly-serviceable 27-year-old, socially.)

If I could support one social agancy, it would be one to do these things, to give these trainings.

Edited to add: and if they’d had a way for us to keep fit and exercise without requiring team sports, I wouldn’t have abandoned Phys Ed as soon as I possibly could (end of Grade 9), and I’d be in a lot better shape!

[Sampiro]

I grew up way the hell out in the middle of nowhere in a house where nobody came by accident unless their car broke down. Things I would have liked to have had include simple things like friends coming over or being able to go to the mall or somewhere other than the pasture when bored. Of course ideally I would like to have dated but even if I were 16 today- an era of incomparably higher gay visibility (if not acceptance) in school- I don’t know that I’d have the guts to come out in high school.

[Siam_Sam]

@Dogzilla

fuck my husband like a Thai hooker.

You’ve made me think what experience I wish I’d had at age 16, hehehe.

[moejoe]

@salinqmind

So much. So, so much I wish I’d done.

Maybe not at 16, but I wish after I’d graduated (at 17) I had the self confidence and self esteem and backbone to move far, far away from my awful, clueless, self-absorbed family. Now I’m stuck here in the same city I grew up in, in snow country, and obligated to help what’s left of that pathetic crew as they grow old and feeble and clueless as ever. I could have escaped. Didn’t. Even if I fell flat on my face out there on my own, I dream it would have been worth it.

This. Exactly this, why didn’t I make a break for it way back then when I could have gotten away with it?

[Soliloquy]

@Acid_Lamp

I hate you.

Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t all sex and booze. My teen years were miserable and I wouldn’t relive them for anything.

But I’m sure plenty of people agree with that sentiment. Hey, I’m female, and, from what some people have said, I was reasonably cute. Getting laid was easy.

[Rick]

If I could only go back and do high school again knowing what I know now…
Anyway doing it over, I would jump Lynne’s bones, and Jessica’s and several other girls I won’t list.
I would have never let Cathy go for those 20 years before we reconnected.
I wish I had studied a bit harder and got just a bit better GPA.
Other than that, no real regrets.

[Roderick_Femm]

@Sleeps_With_Butterflies

I don’t normally do the {{{ hugs }}} thing but this just about broke my heart.
:: snuggles :: I wish you could have had that, too

[QUOTE=pohjonen]
Ain’t that the truth. I remember seeing “The Children’s Hour” on TV and thinking, well here we are. There’s nothing to do but hang myself.
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Maiira]

This saddens me a lot. I’m sorry, Roderick. Also hugs
[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Sunspace]
I’m sorry to hear what you’ve gone through, Roderick Femm.
[/QUOTE]
Thank you, everyone, very much; I may have oversold the angst a bit in my post above. I don’t actually think I have it so different from lots of people, gay and straight, who never learned to fully integrate sex and love. I think I’m not nearly as unhappy as I made it sound.

Oh, and Maiira, since you were so nice to me here I hereby apologize for what I just now said about your post in the TSA thread. But I do believe you were probably mistaken about what was going on. At least I devoutly hope so.
Roddy

[Roderick_Femm]

@Roderick_Femm

Oh, and Maiira, since you were so nice to me here I hereby apologize for what I just now said about your post in the TSA thread. But I do believe you were probably mistaken about what was going on. At least I devoutly hope so.
Roddy

Never mind, it was someone else with a similar name. I’m glad. And I take back the apology

[Maiira]

@Roderick_Femm

Never mind, it was someone else with a similar name. I’m glad. And I take back the apology

Ha, I was just about to be like “wait, what? TSA thread? What TSA thread? I posted in a TSA thread?? What did I say??” flail

Glad it was just a case of mistaken identity.

[BigT]

At that point, I was just losing all the confidence I’d had the year before. I just wish I wouldn’t have assumed that you had to be invited by people to sit at their lunch table, and that popularity wasn’t just something that happened. Yes, I lucked into it in ninth grade, but I lucked into being standoffish in tenth grade (including from having mono).

I also wish I would have realized how not mentally ill I was. My problems were all problems everyone else had. But I assumed I was broken, and didn’t try to fix them, except from what I was told to do in therapy.

But, really, all in all, I had a pretty good life back then, even if I didn’t appreciate it.

[Robot_Arm]

Yeah, sex for me, too.

Still got my fingers crossed. Here’s hoping.

[jjimm]

@tr0psn4j

I wish I had listened to my parents less. They gave (and still give) horrible advice. I generally would do what sounded best to me but on a few occasions, I tried taking their advice and it always ended up horribly.

This. “You must be a scientist”; “sports and athletic activity are pointless”; “you like that girl? Well have you told her that you like her?” - the only way to win a woman; “you got dumped? Well did you tell her that you like her?” - the only way to lose a woman; no social skills passed down, they all had to be learned; guilt trips at my atheism; a total lack of connection on an emotional level nor empathy with a single piece of adolescent angst - or adult angst today for that matter. So many bad pieces of advice, and such a bad model for interaction, concentrated in a single couple, albeit a well meaning one.

It’s why my rebellion was so overwhelming, I think. Living in the middle of nowhere, nothing to do, while all my friends were out and about and socialising in the nearby towns. Hallucinogens and alcohol became my occupation, and my academic performance collapsed. (I did, however, become “cool”, but I didn’t know what to do with it.)

So yeah, I would have become a more physically active person, something I’ve only come to in my forties; I would have turned away from a socially retarded model for interpersonal relationships much earlier; my relationship with drugs would have been less committed and I therefore probably wouldn’t have fucked up my academic life so badly. And I would have had the social ability to have decent relationships and get some sex, something that had to wait a couple of years.

[jjimm]

Hmm, I realise I sound like a “poor little rich boy” with the above. I did not suffer as many dopers have suffered, not a bit: I was raised in a loving, financially secure household. There are many other things that could have been bad about it, and I acknowledge that and am grateful for the stability it provided.

But within that context, my parents were - and remain - clueless about the world, and are almost totally detached from standard interpersonal relationships, societally acceptable behaviour, and any sense of self-awareness.

[Maggie_the_Ocelot]

I wish I’d learned to drive. I’m about to turn 40, now, and never learned, and it’s become this big THING that just terrifies me.

I wish I had learned how to put on makeup and style my hair.

I wish I’d been able to look at myself in the mirror and acknowledge that I was, in fact, reasonably attractive, and not a hideous ugly monster.

I wish I’d stood up to my parents more. It wasn’t until years later that I realized that they would respect me more if I stood up for my wants/point of view than if I just knuckled under.

[anya_marie]

I wish I would have kicked some ass…or that i had smacked some stupid little bitch.

I wish i would have done something to make my life easier. I wish I would have had a Ferris Bueller-style day off.

I would have gotten another HS yearbook. I don’t know that i would have gone to prom but I should have asked the boy i liked on a picnic or something. I should have gone ahead and bought a guitar, and learned to play it. I should have asked that dude in photography class to reccomends some interesting music.

[AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet]

Gone to a school or program for deaf and hard of hearing kids. High school was HORRENDOUS, and I still wish I had known that I didn’t have to be stuck in such an abnormal experiance.
That in turn would have opened up social and emotional options for me, and I wouldn’t be so effed up today.

[Sevastopol]

I wish I had been more violent, instead of a sweet kid.