youth

HOW DO YOU DO…

youth

Generation Z

Youth now is all street and tart and sex innit? Gone is the innocence so people say. But do youths still make stuff that isn’t conical shaped and filled with dope smoke? Do they have funny hobbies that aren’t filmed on you tube and referred to as happy slaps? Are there youths that reach 16 that haven’t got 47 kids and twelve thousand names in various eastern languages tattooed to their stretch-marked skin flaps? Maybe, but aren’t they all hoity toity, rum and raison toff-tarts?

Hoodies

Just to straighten things out.

1. Adults wear just as many hoodies as youths

2. They’re warm, it rains a lot

3. When you’re a teenager you don’t look the most attractive, you’re greasy, spotty, ill defined, largely a-symmetrical, so you’d kinda wanna hide that bird-face, with a hood.

4. Its George Lucas’s fault. If that adult hadn’t have made Emperor Poopintime all evil hooded, then confused everyone by giving goody gum drops Jedis hoods, non of this would have happened. And I would have had atleast 9 hours of my life back, Lucass.

It wasn’t the same in my day

Youth has and will be, a bit rebellious, it’s nothing new. Everyone wants to deem everything’s worse now, out of control, verging on martial law war, riots, and the breakdown of society as a whole. What Gran Robinson seems to conveniently forget is that crime in Victorian times was at least hundred times worse, in London alone. Mischief, scallywags, scamps, all originated before the riots of the mods and rockers who turned into the young punks. It was always the same theme, ‘got fuck all to do, I’ll amuse myself’. It’s not a reason or excuse but throughout the ages boredom and frustration have strangely started a lot. And building a few pissy skate ramps isn’t the solution.

Respect yer elders

Course there’s a respect issue in this country but it’s not exclusively from youth. Yeah sure, calling grandpa an old codger is rude cos he maybe risked his life for you and he might know a lot more than you if his Alzheimer’s hadn’t set in. And he might not have been perving down a fourteen year olds top anyway, it could be quite plausibly his caterax gone wrong, several times on different occasions.

Adults are just as rude, if not more so. Not getting up for old people, everyone’s done that, you didn’t see them did you because you were looking in the other direction, on purpose. Pushing in, if we can, we will. Twenty quid on the street, could be that guy who probably needs it just ahead, a no. “Grans on the phone, she wants to speak to you,” but did she say that, or did she say “it’s been a while since we caught up.”

When you’re youth you get told off so much, it’s like every other word is a criticism of your actions. When you’re older you hardly ever get told off. I don’t even remember the last time I got told off. If I really, really think it was probably something depraved I requested when I was drunk or something involving idiocy that as a youth would be punishable. Offensive as an adult, it’s just your character, so it’s fine.

Got the Fear?

Don’t be scared of youths, be scared of your worn faces turning withered, your fine hair going translucent, your dress sense resembling your grandparents, who are probably dead now, your sooo old.

“Look, they’re hanging out.” Youths have at some point a legitimate need to wait at bus stops, stand around on street corners, walk the streets at night, shout even, get pissed and do stupid things, meet and talk to more than one other friend, yes, a gang. Generally act like human people.

Not that I’m entirely representative but when I was a teenager, I went, shall we say, astray yet never got served an asbo, was told to disperse, banned from going out after dark or chucked out of Tandy once.

They speak a different language

Well maybe, but it’s not alien, it’s not as though you can’t understand kids who insist on splattering out patwa that deliberately abbreviates, distorts and remoulds compounds into adjectives, verbs into yo’s. These youths are like neo cockneys purveyors of a cut down language that gets absorbed into our tongues. The vast majority of teens speak the same style as adults; your average small town Yorkshire teenager would be just as dumbstruck talking to some inner city tough-up teen as you talking to Westwood.

Bad boys

Watcha gonna do when they come for you? Well there’s always a few bad youths, like adults, like pensioners. But Fanny the fraudster doesn’t get nearly as much tabloid space as Jimmy joy rider. Because psychologically it’s a comfortable ideology to stick to that the youth are up to no good and the OAP’s just want a quiet life.

As proper bo

Asbo youth, Asbo hoodies, Asbo Queen. Asbo been the recent governmental punishment of anti social behaviour using their proven to fail policy of gauging good, from bad. But as pretty much everything the government decides to implement to control, change or halt an action it essential ends up doing the opposite. That copper on the door at number 10 should be given the responsibility of not only guarding a door, of which he has done an exemplary job of. But whenever anyone leaves number 10 he should slyly whisper into their ears in a Derren Brownian tone “ flip reverse it.”

Budgets would be Bonanza’s. Youth never criminalised. Everyone’s on a pay rise. And the rich get screwed.

Talent

Musicians, writers, even Hollywood actors are getting younger every second I get older. Last month I met a fashion designer called Bret. Bret has had four catwalk shows, won several awards and is only fifteen. His first show was at 11, eleven! Yesterday, a 10 year old served me for cigarettes, admittedly he was part of the family business but it’s alarming. You get the feeling Britain might be subtly turning into a giant sweatshop run by a burly Fagan type, scratching his moist hairy crack and spitting incomprehensible orders to anyone over the age of five seconds. Must, not, browse, through, Daily Mail, even if suicidally bored.

Grow, grow my pretties, (in this cage)

Yes, so lets all calm down, stop profiling young people as being up to no good. Sit back and realise that boyish charm and those pert tight-skirted teens will eventually become the cheated, worthless work slaves, or us.

Like the adult who can’t play football in the park with kids because he fears being branded a paedo. So to the youth through largely no fault to themselves have been criminalised because of their age, choice of clothing, slang or place they wish to stand. Youth is all about experimentation, searching for freedom of thought and in some respects rebellion of childhood. Yet society wants further fraction and distortion in a deluded hope youth can be cured from itself.

Blink and you’ll diss it

Youth is fleeting although at the time seems inescapable. The youth orientated media perpetuates it as being the eternal elixir failing to inform you that it’s neither achievable or worth anything when you have it.

So adults live in states of jealous wastage, getting youth to: ‘sort yourself out, get it right, achieve, work a proper days work’. Not remembering you probably felt just as confused, just as claustrophobic and just as daunted. Like someone who obviously hasn’t made particularly great decisions in their life, thinks that they truly have, and is so confident that they’re telling you how to be just like them.

Youth is this asset to our society, creatively, emotionally, linguistically, and all those other -lys. The media and rest of the population need to find a middle ground of understanding and freedom or this and the next generation might be the next social rebellion. Although that doesn’t sound, too bad. But when it does happen we’ll be too old to enjoy it.

Tips

We shouldn’t hug a hoodie that’s just homogaypien. And reading just seventeen is still a bit tame. Going to youth clubs may get you a reputation. And wearing pigtails just don’t suit ya, Joyce.