This Is My Generation, Baby

As part of the research and reporting process I'm undergoing for my book I was instructed by my writing teacher to construct a timeline of my life. This involved contacting old friends (which was an epic disaster), interviewing family members, studying old photo albums, listening to music, and rummaging through the dusty dark attic of my memory in an effort to document as much of my nearly 26 years on this planet as possible. So I sat down and got to work with a yellow legal pad, a pencil, my photo albums, and You Tube; because none of my old CDs function anymore and who the hell still has a working cassette player? Since my high school years are essentially the focus of the book, I began there.

What a phenomenal mess that period of time was! Stuck in limbo somewhere between innocence and accountability lies what can only be called a teenage wasteland (chill, Pete Townshend, the check's in the mail). Miserably unaware of our own ignorance, we were convinced we had the whole world figured out. That ridiculousness of that idea should have been clear from our questionable fashion choices. We were so self-important, trying to rebel against the boundaries of middle class oppression. The following is a list of causes I felt entitled enough to battle my parents to near death over:

1. My right to listen to any music I wanted, after my father confiscated CDs by such timeless artists as DMX, Wu-Tang Clan, Bone Thugs -n- Harmony, and Eminem
2. The injustice that was my mother shredding a tee-shirt I had purchased with the Playboy bunny logo massively displayed in red glitter
3. How incredibly unfair it was of them to ground me and keep me from seeing my boyfriend after finding a homemade bong in the backyard
4. And this is one of my favorites... delaying me from getting my driver's licence for an entire year because, at 14, I snuck out my bedroom window in the middle of the night, walked 2 miles to my friend's house, stole her mom's car, picked up our friends, and went joyriding for 3 hours when none of us had a license.

This list could go on but I had to stop before I gave myself brain damage from rolling my eyes so much at my own idiocy. Since when does a group of kids who spend their weekends drinking Mad Dog and Popov and smoking cheap weed out of a hollowed out carrot have their lives figured out? Logic and reason were grand acts of futility and were often met by vacant stares or razor sharp insults fired with surprising accuracy. 

I am amazed to this day that I somehow got out of that period alive. My Wu-Tang CDs died a slow death in the back of a closet somewhere, my Reebok Classics and JNCO Jeans have long since been retired, and I like to think my English skills have improved since the days of using the words "wuz" and "fug". I'm just lucky there are people in my life that still wanted to talk to me after that.

It's all worth the effort if lessons can be learned. As embarrassed as I am that I used to be that person, I learned so much in the process of growing out of it. The most important lesson, I think, being that teenagers know essentially as much about life as a hamster knows about physics. That, and the fact that gangster rap is not appropriate or relevant for a middle class white girl in Towson.