BACKGROUND MUSIC NOT YOUR SCENE?
YOU HAVE MY PERMISSION TO TURN IT OFF RIGHT HERE!
Might be a generation-gap thing!
About A Boy.
by MAGGIE ALDERSON
BACKGROUND MUSIC NOT YOUR SCENE?
YOU HAVE MY PERMISSION TO TURN IT OFF RIGHT HERE!
I have been making a study of teenage boys. It was prompted by the distress of a neighbour, whose beloved 16-year-old son has turned overnight from her best pal into a foul beast.
What I have recently observed in two young men whom I have known since they were just days old - a nephew and the son of a friend so dear he might as well be a nephew - is that boys do emerge from the adolescent horror period just as girls do. The whole process just happens a little later. Girls seem to go into the tunnel at about 13 and emerge at sweet 16, whereas boys go in at 15 and come out at 18. From what I've seen you could almost set your clock by it. The processes are also different. I have described the girl version before - it's the "swan moment" when a lumpy, bumpy, painful adolescent girl suddenly transforms into
a beautiful young woman.
With the boys it's not so much the ugly duckling as the Very Hungry Caterpillar. They certainly have appetites comparable to that voracious bug.
I couldn't believe it when I had my 16-year-old nephew to stay. (He was so deep in the zone at the time, I had to practically kidnap him for a visit to save my brother's sanity and possibly prevent a murder in the family.)
Whereas girls in the teen tunnel are gawky and awkward things, who look as though they've been put together from some ill-matched spare parts, boys are simply monstrous. They disappear entirely into their new personas.
It's so awful;' she said, tears in her eyes.
He used to get into bed with me and talk about poetry. Now he slams his bedroom door in my face."
I really felt sorry for her - but I am now able to offer a crumb of comfort: it won't last. I know this from my studies.
Man, could he eat. He could get through a whole packet of cereal in one sitting. Litres of milk disappeared. Fistfuls of pies.
So he was a very hungry teenager, but the other similarity is the chrysalis stage.
They usually have pimples, adopt an unflattering (and usually unwashed) hairstyle and wear frightful baggy clothes - by choice, the same ones every day. Plus trainers of terrifying fungal rottenness.
Really, they are just festering mounds of hormones. It's terrible to see. Especially when you've dandled them on your knees, back when theirs were still dimpled.
And that's just their appearance. On top of that you havethe stun-gun attitude to deal with, plus the comprehensible caveman grunting that passes for speech and a universal,terrible sniggering laugh.
Which is why that American cartoon Beavis and Butt-head, about two appalling teenage heavy metal freaks, is so
hilariously perfect. They're ugly. They have dreadful hair. They communicate entirely in grunts and sniggers. And their only interests are very loud screeching guitars, humiliating each other, and breasts. It's practically a home video, it's so spot-on.
At one point my friend's son was turning into such a Butt-head I was quite worried about him, but his aunt - who had observed the syndrome in her three younger brothers - kept telling me to keep the faith.
"One day he'll suddenly turn into Cary Grant," she said.
I didn't believe her - but it turns out she was right. Just a few weeks shy of his 18th birthday, he's cut off his dreadful curtain of filthy hair and done something serious about looking for a job. He's also delightful.
"Do come in for a cup of tea," he said to me the last time I gave him a lift home. I nearly fainted.
I'm delighted to say that the same transformation has taken place in my nephew, who is suddenly an extremely affable and handsome 18-year-old.
Beautiful butterflies, the pair of them. My neighbour just has a couple of years to wait.
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