Young Adults

Samantha and I spent an hour at the park this afternoon.

Three thirty on a Wednesday afternoon is not prime kiddie time. She was a bit disappointed when we got there to be the only preschooler; I was a bit amused to see a half dozen teenagers hanging around the picnic area with their skateboards. Ahh, I thought to myself, it's great to see the neighborhood kids have a semi-healthy gathering spot. No smoking, drinking, or pot-smoking going on here, just some 14ish year old boys (and one girl) doing half-flips from the picnic tables with their skateboards.

Over the next thirty minutes the group slowly swelled, until there were at least a dozen crowded under the picnic shelter. As Samantha and I stopped to empty the playground sand from our sneakers, one newly arriving group stopped less than five feet behind our bench to say their hello's.

It was immediately obvious that I have crossed all borders into the land of old. Old, and invisible. They paid no attention to me - or to the three year old with me.

"Is Shannon here yet?" The female in the group asked. She looked to be sixteen-going-on-welfare mom. Long dirty blonde hair with six inches of split ends. Too much eyeliner and lipstick.

"Who?" The sk8t3r boy was maybe 17. Seemed to be the leader of the three boys, since he did most of the talking while the other two echoed "dude" and "shi-it".

"Fat Shannon. She said she'd be here." A snicker in her voice had me hoping for Shannon's sake she wasn't here.

"Yo, Fat Shannon. No, she's not here." Two eager to please voices echoed "Fat Shannon, dude." "Fat Shannon - shi-it."

"You heard she ***ked two boys at the party last weekend." The girl is obviously disgusted by this rumor."

"No shi-it dude. She really ***ked them?" Leader boy sounds far from disgusted. His snickering pals as well.

"That's what I heard. But really, she's such a slut. I wasn't suprised." The girl is enjoying this. A chance to talk dirty, which guarantees the boys attention, while spreading dirt about someone else.

I looked at my daughter sitting next to me. I'd been humming a song the whole time, hoping that I was drowning out their voices, or at least distracting her from their words. She didn't seem to notice them at all, her attention split between my humming and the slightly younger group doing skateboard moves behind us.

And I wondered, is this what it is to be a teenager today?

Rumors flew around high school when I was there; which girls (and boys) were doing what with whom, which ones would be rewarded for the behavior and which ones would be shunned. But I don't remember hearing anyone so much enjoy the spreading of a rumor, the destroying of a persons reputation, as much as this girl was today.

My son is only 3 short years from high school. That's scary enough, but he's an independant sort. Much like me, he at least has a shell of outter aloofness that carries him through the gauntlet of public scrutiny. But my daughter seems to be a softer sort. At three, she already worries about who was "mad" at her today in preschool, or who wouldn't be her friend. It scares the hell out of me to think of her as a teenager, and knowing not to far down the road I won't be there to hum over the uglier parts of growing up.