Nope. I don't subscribe to it. I've been listening to the annual astonishment, indignation, condemnation of the activities of our 15 year olds celebrating their Junior Cert results, and it's the same old annual nonsense trotted out each time. Fact is, we're human beings and humans have dolled themselves up and got hammered to mark all sorts of events from the time we discovered drugs and alcohol. In some Brazilian rainforest a teen is probably painting themselves red and black right now and going on the lash with copious amounts of fermented grandmother spit. The only difference is that our wee lassies paint themselves orange all over and wear more clothes. Barely more.
Same thing next year. Mark it in the calendar.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
No Junior Cert astonishment & indignation here
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3 comments:
Ya see the Sunday papers today....horrific...photos too. We should all hang our heads...stunned to think why we are horrified at the girls...when the boys are also to blame...and the root problem...PARENTS.... I was horrified....my girls are 10 and I just want to keep them inside after seeing this....
D
Kells
I think of it like this. All year round, people buy gifts and give them to people for birthdays, anniversaries, new births, whatever. Each Christmas, the buying is ratcheted up to fever pitch by all the hype and you can hardly move in the streets for shoppers.
Each weekend, 15 year olds are getting drunk, pawing and being pawed at, and doing more "adult" things. It's only at Junior Cert results night that the whole thing gets hyped up and the otherwise comfortably invisible activity becomes a huge city-wide grope and puke fest.
I'm kind of astonished at our annual astonishment, I suppose.
Interesting slant from an article in the Sunday Independent today:
"Sometimes the camera does lie"
"THEY say a picture is worth a thousand words, so when a national newspaper publishes a front-page photo of a line of teenage girls who have just got their exam results queueing to get into a disco, and sees fit to chop off their heads, one wonders what particular thousand words they had in mind. Nor did I have a good answer when a teenage girl who had cut out and kept the photograph attacked me on behalf of all media.
"What crime these youngsters have committed that they needed to be hidden? Is this the beginning of Sharia Law in Ireland? Were they all wearing their knickers on their heads to give the boys easier access? Did they all have knapsacks full of vodka? Were they all using condoms for earrings? Were they already so drunk that maybe they couldn't get their facial features in synch to smile for the photograph?
""Maybe," she fumed, "they were a group of schoolgirls dropped off by a parent, excited about the night out, worried what they would say if a boy talked to them, terrified they would not be asked to dance, and a bit annoyed that they were being collected at 12 and would be tucked up and asleep an hour later because they had school the next day."
"The photo reminded me of another photo I noticed recently of a group of high-heeled women with short skirts. But these ones wereallowed show their coiffed hair, big smiles and millions of teeth. There was not alot of difference between the uniforms of the Ryder Cup women and the disco youngsters in terms of showing a lot of leg. As far as I know, the Ryder Cup WAGS are not easy lays.
"Sure, some kids have too much sex, unprotected and too young. So did, and do, their parents.
"But the previous generation did not have a long lens on their case suggesting that short skirts equals instant, anonymous sex.
"Like most old fogeys, I am capable of being appalled by stories of what the youngsters of today get up to. But, unlike some old fogeys, I can also remember what their parents got up to and sometimes wonder is a whole generation suffering from collective amnesia. Have they blotted out every grope they had before they were 21, particularly the ones with people they did not even fancy as their brains oscillated between repulsion and a bit of lust? Did they never raid the drinks cabinet and finish the evening throwing up in someone's garden?
"Do they not know that at every family celebration since the year dot there have been uncles, aunts, parents and neighbours who see it as absolutely essential to get out of their faces to have a good time? When was the last wedding you were at when there wasn't some fat balding squiffy molester mauling his way around anything with a skirt while his embarrassed wife protested that it was only a bit of fun. And we get surprised that the next generation has learned that the appropriate way to celebrate anything is to have too much to drink. They didn't learn by osmosis, but much more likely by observation. And you and I and just about anyone older than them have been very good teachers.
"A fair few people were involved in the decision to take and publish that photo that I was in no position to defend, or apologise for. I trust they are all teetotallers, never touch their private parts except to scratch, did not have sex before marriage, or even think of it outside their marriage, and celebrated yet another sleazy photo with a cup of cocoa in their slippers after a decade of the Rosary.
-- John Masterson
John Masterson is a Doctor of Psychology"
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