I know im not one of the “older” members as specified in the OP but I got something to say too…
I’m almost 23 right now. And man, if I could go back to being a teenager I would do it in a heartbeat! I’m sure you may :rolleyes: about that but its quite scary being this age. Its friggin hard!!
I mean, I have started what appears to be a career. I’ve already started slowly down on the drinking and now I go to bed much earlier- and I certainly dont do anything on worknights And I am in the horrible decision of having to figure if I want to stay with the man I love- or do I want to move on because Im so young and I should experience more. Its scary. So scary- Im trying so hard to make the right choices. I’m drowning in bills- my car is falling apart… That never used to be a problem. My Mom always said that your twenties arent easy- and I never beleived her. I will never doubt her again.
You know what I want? I want to go back about 6 years- back when I worked at Baskin Robbins. Back when my most difficult decision was whether or not to smoke a joint or a pipe load. Back when I was a senior in highschool- being silly and taking silly highschool classes. Back when Prom was “stressful”!
Does it get better??? Easier? Or do you just get used to it?
Probably not. My teen years were spent following a very authoritarian father’s dicta. He wasn’t abusive, far from it. He was a cop, though, and since he had arrested so many teens, he had definite ideas about what my brother and I would and wouldn’t be permitted to do.
Step 1: Move us out into the boonies. Nearest neighbor one mile away.
Step 2: Build a basement recreation room with pool table, foosball, etc.
Step 3: Provide us with motorcycles, archery equipment, and guns.
Step 4: Tell us we were free to ride, shoot, etc. to our hearts content, but we would not be attending any dances or parties because that is where trouble started.
So, I rode and I shot. I shot and I rode. I read an awful lot. Walked in the woods a lot. Didn’t interact with too many people my own age in other than the school setting, though. To this day, I am an excellent shot and a skilled motorcyclist, but I think much of my twenties and thirties would have been less turbulent if I had spent more time in the company of others in my teens.
Overall, no. I’m happy where I am, I like my life at 30, and in general things have gotten steadily happier in my life.
Teen years weren’t so bad after about 16, and I did have quite a bit of fun. College years were great, but also stressful in some ways that I wouldn’t want to relive (that is, exam stress was OK, other stresses not so much). I had a great time and all, and there are things that happened, feelings etc. that I won’t get back–but while it might be nice to visit, I wouldn’t want to live there again. Besides, I gotta see what happens next.
Pfft. Never again – not without automatic weapons.
I was a pretty happy kid, once. I liked school (class, that is) and I liked people, and that lasted all the way through elementary school. Somehow, getting beat up at least once a week never took the joy out of life the way emotional abuse did in junior high. By the time I got to high school, my motivation was shot, I never did homework that couldn’t be finished in class, and I was the despair of good teachers who knew that I was one of their brightest students. It took me seven years to get through college, just getting over the bad habits I picked up from telephoning in my high school years. And it took longer than that to get over the anhedonia.
Fond memories? Dates? PROM?? WTF? No, there’s nothing I’m going to miss about being a teenager. Hell, I don’t think there was anything worth going through again until I was 25. If I could make 25-30 spread out and take over the rest of my life, I’d do it.
I wonder if nostalgia for your teens correlates with how poplular you were in high school? All the kids I know who were on the fringe sure don’t miss it. Me neither. My life has gotten noticeably better every year since I left home. My 10 year reunion is coming up this summer, and I want to go out of curiosity, but believe me, I won’t be doing much reminiscing.
If I look back and just think about the good stuff, and having everything paid for by my parents, it seems attractive. But school was a major pain. If I had to sit still for the better part of 6 hours listening to boring crap like plane geometry, without being able to leave the premises or even go to the bathroom without permission…let’s face it, it’s prison.
Abso-frickin’-lutely not. Especially not the pre-college part. I can’t think of anything at all that was better about my life then compared to now, except for some grandparents who were still alive. And there wasn’t even anything specifically particularly bad about my teenage years (I wasn’t abused or in trouble or anything like that, for instance); there just wasn’t anything very good about them.
Now, if I had them to do over knowing what I know now, that might be worth doing. But I’d still rather look forward than backward.
Easier and better. You learn to be an adult, make better choices, and you get more money to play with.
Remember, all those ‘it was easy in my teens’ was because during the teen years most people are just empty-headed fools. So why on God’s green earth would I want to go back to that?
Lack of responsibility isn’t happiness because with it comes a lack of freedom. As I’ve gotten older and (hopefully) wiser my decision-tree has grown exponentially.
Do I want to spend the weekend in New Orleans? Sure. Try THAT as a teen.
Do I want to buy a motorcycle? Sure.
Do I want the cop that pulled me over to treat me like a human being? Sure.
I think nifferka’s got a point here - everyone I know from my high school (save for maybe one person) would rather pull out their fingernails than go back to the teen years (including me). And all of us (again, except for that one person), while we weren’t the lowest of the low, weren’t the happy popular ones, either. We were all somewhere in the middle strata, some higher, some lower. And we all thought it sucked. Except for the one - she was more up in the popular world, and I’m not certain what she’d do.
It makes me curious what I’d see at my 10 year reunion next summer. Will there be two groups - the “losers” who have moved on and have great lives and great experiences and are genuinely happy post-graduation, and the “populars” who are wistful and nostalgic and who would go back in a heartbeat to recapture their glory days? Or something else entirely? I don’t know. And I may not find out - not sure I want to go.
Me? These are some of the best so far. 21 - 27 is grand.
Snicks
[QUOTE=SHAKES]
If I could go back Knowing what I know *now,*I’d be a f’n KING!
QUOTE]
You got that right.
I would make a few slightly different decisions…
Being a teenager was fun - lack of resposibility, school was easy, I was in the middle of the social tier system. But I like the person I am now.
I just turned 27 a week ago and I have loved every minute of the past 5 years. I got to travel, graduated University, found a good job that I love and I think I am a much better person for it. I am totally different from the person that I was 10 years ago - that person would never have taken some of the decisions that I did that have got me where I am and that is a good thing. Nope life is good right now and I really wouldn’t want to change it. I do know some people from my school days that really wish they were back there as it was the high point of their lives which frankly is sad.
Well, I am a teen now (6). I have never been to parties, never tried drinking/drugs, never been bullied, fairly well liked or atleast I manage to establish some friendships with cliques of all types, some of my best friendships are with teachers, I love learning, I go to bed at 1030 weeknights and 11 on weekends, and I work pretty hard around the house. My parents do not care what I do, they never really make me do any work. From where I stand it seems that when I am your age, I will want to have not wasted all these innocent years. Hell, I want to not waste them now.
So yea, I would like to relieve them, but I do not think that I would do anything different.
High school was awesome for me. I was surrounded by good, loyal-to-the-death friends and enthusiastic, supportive teachers. Plus, my body at 15 was the sexiest it’s ever been.
I choreographed dance pieces and directed stage plays for local festivals. I got to interview jazz legend Oscar Peterson for a magazine (at his house!). When my dance school instituted a brand new award in memory of a recently deceased benefactor, I was the inaugural winner.
My friends were so funny, sweet, smart, angsty, witty and playful that it was like living in an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, except without the mortal peril. Someone always had their guitar, so we’d have jam sessions during lunch hour where we’d sing compositions such as “Hot Tub Of Love” and “A Whore Named Jenny”. We were all just as into literature and philosophy as we were into pop culture, which would result in us alternating between making fun of Yeats and Descartes with quoting The Simpsons. There was also a lot of hugging.
It was like paradise, especially after the 11- 13 years, which were an Inferno.
I’m only 20, and a part of me wants to be 17 again. 15-18 was a good time for me - I may ot ave been Popular in HS, but I did have good friends, had fun hanging out all night, dating around, stuff like that.
Mostly, I miss the people and doing things with them. So I think I may just be missing Austin. I’m still friends with almost everyone from my teen years, it’s just that they’re 1200m away.
I don’t miss school, but I do miss not having to worry about bills and such.
Let me start by saying that I’m 45. The last 8 years have been the happiest of my life, due to meeting my wife and moving 1200 miles to start over with her. I can’t complain about much anymore, because it keeps getting better.
I did manage to have fun before that, but mainly, every single year of my life since I learned to talk was a complete disaster. I suffered physical and emotional abuse at home and at school until I was 15 and had to leave home to get away from it. I never had a girlfriend. Never went on a date. Never went to the prom. Couldn’t keep a job. Couldn’t keep people from stealing everything I owned. I was homeless for most of the 1980s, living in hostels where the so-called christians kept throwing out everything I managed to accumulate, and spent eight years of the '90s on welfare, in a tiny basement room in a rooming house where the other constantly rotating tenants were thieves and drug addicts and alcoholics and idiots with violent tempers.
Now I have a lovely wife, a great job doing what I always wanted, I live in a nice house in a nice neighborhood in a place where the weather is insanely pleasant, I have three cats and all kinds of accoutrements of life to play with.
I have mixed feelings. At times, I romanticize 13-19 because I had friends (who literally gave me a reason to live) and did very well in school, and because it included my first year away from home. I went to a few parties and went to prom (without a date, but I had a good time anyway).However, I was constantly picked on in junior high and betrayed by some who I thought were friends, sat at home most weekend nights, and began suffering the first symptoms of clinical depression. Not that the past four years have been a lot of fun either. Even though it will mark a giant leap in requiring responsibility, I can’t wait until I finish college, move out of my parents’ house and start working.
