I’m pretty sure that, once upon a time, I was a teenager. I mean, I distinctly remember it so therefore, it must have happened. The 80’s weren’t that long ago, well…in comparison to other previous generations. Sigh.
Back in those days, when I was a teen, I understood teenagers. We were a simple breed, kind of. I mean, aside from the angst and moodiness. We didn’t have all these add-ons like worrying about how many “shares” and “likes” we’d get. In fact, those words weren’t even used the way they are now.
Like, in my day, meant LIKE. “Like, I totally, like like you. Or…”like, we should like totally, for sure, hang out on Friday, that would be like totally bitchen.” Or…”Like OH. My. God, barf me out, gag me with a spoon!” Notice…no OMG. We didn’t text-talk back then. Well, for like, totally obvious reasons, for sure.
And shares? Maybe we’d share lunch or share a 2 liter of Bartels and James. Or, share the answers from our homework assignments via little shared handwritten notes.
Back when I was growing up, when we took pictures with our totally tubular Polaroid cameras, we like totally smiled without making these…um…so NOT rad faces. Granted, the only places we could “post” our pics was on the door of our locker or on our bedroom walls next to pictures of John Taylor…er…our love interests. Or, we’d have to drop off film to get developed only to find that our long awaited pics of that great time…totally thumb-shots and no way to retake them. Sniffle.
Nowadays, these kids need to take an Instagram/Facebook chill pill, like I’m so sure. Like, oh my god, barf me out with those duck faces. And the tantrums and picture retakes if they don’t get enough shares or likes. What’s with that?
As for their language, their “slang”? I don’t get it. Most of the time I’m like…Um, translate here. For example…crunk? Like, WTF…so not tope. *eyeroll* When we were telling people, via a passed note, not a completely public FB status update, that we drank too many wine coolers on Friday night, we’d say we were “shitfaced”. And the only witnesses were those at the party and the teacher that intercepted the note to share with our parents. Busted.
I realize that the styles back in my day were probably far from radical. But, I think we were a little more modest, no? There are a lot of cute clothes in the stores but once they are pieced together into these things called “outfits”? So NOT EVEN close to being righteous. Call me a hater. Well yeah, because I am when it comes to their clothes. But, my mom probably hated the way I dressed.
Our yoga pant equivalent was something along the lines of parachute pants which…seriously? How? Why? And also, neon spandex leggings. But those were like totally cool, yo. We’d top it off with nifty t-shirts that were LONG. Oh, we had words on our shirts too. Words like “Relax, don’t do it.” or “Wake me up before you go-go” or “Where’s the beef?”. Now? Their butts say to the world that they are “Pink” or “Phat”. That’s like totally rad, psych.
Not to mention their shirts…if their belly buttons aren’t exposed for the world to see, they feel naked and insecure. Imagine that?!
We used to twist and pin the bottoms of our jeans to make them tighter, guys too. This pants on the ground fad? How come it hasn’t passed the same way the pinned jeans did. And that…was way cuter, fer shurr.
Kids these days, such dopes. Or wait…so dope? *shrugs* I just can’t seem to keep that slang straight.
Exactly.
I only kind of miss my 110 camera and tight rolling jeans. Maybe not.
All I know is that I wasn’t… or couldn’t have been as much of a pain in the !@# as my teens can be!
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I totally remember those days. We were far cooler than these kids.
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We had the polyester thing in the 70s. Disco, man!! And the clothes that went with it!! No jeans, because where I went to school the girls weren’t allowed to wear jeans. We could wear nice slacks to basketball games, presumably because they realized the problem of girls crawling up and down bleachers wearing dresses.
I dread, dread, dread the teen years. I remember the angst of those years very well, and the Queen is showing every sign of being as high-strung and depression-prone as I was, she’s just much louder about it.
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Ugh – the duck face! Why? I don’t think that strange faces are totes adorbs at all.
Remember when “tough issues” were tackled on series episodes of Miller-Boyette productions? Now, it’s Gossip Girl and Secret Life of the American Teen.
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