Is Youth Wasted on the Young?

Children love emulating adults. They play at doctors and nurses, walk around in their mother’s stilettos and make their Barbies have babies. And in some cruel topsy-turvy twist of fate, the elderly are eventually reduced to infantile invalids.

It is arguable that I should also wear a bib at times, but for now I am firmly in the throes of youth.

I was about 11 and in an awkward phase of adolescent consciousness when my grandmother took me to a St. Vincent De Paul charity shop one day in the summer holidays. She was a volunteer there and encouraged to me try find something I liked. The smell of mothballs and secondhand clothes, especially pre-loved scary-sized bras, horrified me.

I was probably more concerned about someone I knew walking past the shop and recognizing me, the chances of which were pretty slim considering we were in a small sleepy coastal town two hours away from my house.

Just to please my grandmother I might have even tried something on, or maybe I just figured there would be less chance of anyone seeing me if I was hiding in the changing room. Granny was obviously way onto “vintage” before me, although for her it was probably more about practicality than high fashion, as it is now one of my favorite things to do.

“I wish I had your looks and knew back then what I do today,” she said to me in the car on the way home. I thought that was a fantastic idea, a super subspecies of adolescents with immortal granny wisdom that would have enough attitude to take over the world and placate Iran with triple-choc brownies.

I have often pondered what my grandmother meant by that exactly. What would she have done differently?

She traveled and worked abroad and met my grandfather in Papua New Guinea at a time when most Australian women were channeling Betty Crocker, floral aprons and the white Australia policy.

I really don’t know, but life is not a book of choose-your-own-adventures possibilities – you don’t have time to live out all the endings. Besides, youthfulness would be a bore without its nonchalance, rebellion, passion and habitual blunders.

It is one of life’s ironies that the beauty of youth is its ignorance.

I still relish the memory of going out all night during high school and getting back just in time to jump into bed about 20 seconds before my mum came in to wake me up. Coup. Or skipping pretty much every lesson of math to stay in bed and read Austen, which, by the way, was a totally responsible decision. Journalists-to-be should never waste time on calculus.

And in many ways, if I had the choice, I might even choose to do all the same stupid things again. I don’t believe anyone would ever willingly return to their adolescence, but if that most unfortunate hypothetical was ever thrust upon me, I would not have:

Believed that Barbie had an attainable body

My grandmother gave me one each Christmas and birthday and has a whole room devoted to a glass cabinet full of the dolls. Imagine my surprise one year when I was given a Feral Cheryl doll with pubic hair and hips.

Been embarrassed by dad’s motorbike

For most kids this would equal serious street cred. I was obviously not that cool – my mother nicknamed me Saffy after the conservative teenage daughter in Absolutely Fabulous because I was as straight as my fringe and so desperately wanted my parents to be too.

Encouraged my best friend to steal something and then watch her get arrested

Or left my other girlfriend at party when she got so drunk she had to get her stomach pumped at a hospital. These fine women still love me and are now successful people with real jobs, but the Australian government should encourage teenagers to become cultured and Italian-like and drink wine every night rather than binging on Fridays. If you need to get your kicks, I suggest you go sprint up a mountain. I definitely should have.

Thought that everyone else’s family was perfect and that mine was screwed up
Everyone’s family is dysfunctional. The ones that look the shiniest are always the most messed up.

Started smoking
I wish I had never ever, ever thought smoking was cool. Apart from being the most idiotic thing a human can do next to smuggling smack into Indonesia, smoking will not make you sexier.

Thought I knew everything at age 12

Precociousness is never attractive. I knew everything there was to know at age 12, and at 21 I decided I knew nothing. I have finally come to accept that the world failed to recognize me as a child prodigy.

Thought that working on a private yacht was close to owning one

The richest 1 percent of the world should really not be showing off their big rubber duckies, obnoxious expensive egos and throwing leftover caviar overboard in St. Tropez when half the world is starving. I’m glad I learned at an early age that the relationship between happiness and money is tenuous at best.

Ignored the fact my mother was not the devil incarnate

Let this be an official apology. She was right about smoking, braces, safe sex, bad boys being bad boys and pretty much everything else she ever said. About anything.

Although George Bernard Shaw said youth was wasted on the young, I’m going to go out on a precarious limb and say he was oh so terribly wrong. + Kate Lamb

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