Teenage Dreams and Disappointments
working title: ‘the teenage experience is a lie and i am sad’
When I watched High School Musical as a kid, the most exciting part of it all to me was the concept of a full-length locker. The extravagance, the absolute luxury of having your own little lockable box to keep everything safe during the day was astounding. When I was in primary school, all we had were coat pegs and a set of (unlocked, unexciting) drawers where we could keep a few pieces of paper that our 8-year-old selves deemed essential.
The expectation of this standard of life followed me to secondary school, where I was shocked and dismayed to discover that not only were there no choreographed dance routines in the halls, but the locker I had was small, shared and nowhere near big enough to be locked inside — not that I wanted to be, but based on every high school film or TV show I’d watched it seemed a criteria that needed to be met.
From this point on, 11-year-old me began to suspect that adolescent life would not, in fact, be as I had pictured it. The disappointments kept on coming in successive years: secondary education passed in a haze of vague discontent and the feeling that I was missing out on something. None of the things I had predicted would be a given for my teenage life were coming to fruition, and it was hard not to feel a bit let down by the whole process.
In a pointless class that taught me nothing except how to stare out the window for prolonged lengths of time, we were asked to write a letter to our future selves. These would be given back to us as we finished our GCSEs, we were told, at which point we could look back and answer the pressing questions that our year 7 selves had had. Amongst other queries, my major concerns were: do I wear makeup, do I have a boyfriend, and is that one girl in my class still annoying? The answer to these was a swift no no yes, all of which would have been a crushing disappointment to the bright-eyed, optimistic me who still thought that I had the hedonistic life of a working-class, British Gossip Girl character ahead of me.
Teenage rebellion, a hallmark of any coming-of-age story, eluded me, due to a combination of a nervous disposition, a lack of connections to rabble-rousing acquaintances and parents who didn’t mind what I did as long as I told them where I was. My two final years of compulsory education were a lonely affair, consisting mainly of sitting at home and eating toast — a far cry from the crazy parties I was expecting.
Most fiction involving young people has a moment where the protagonist realises that they’re special. Their long-lost parent was magic in some way, or it turns out they’re actually royalty (a lot hinges on unknown parentage). Even in the more mundane offerings characters go on a journey of some sort — the story would be pretty boring if they didn’t. Even as a child, knowing that what you’re reading is fiction, it’s hard not to be a little disappointed when you pass the age of your favourite character and realise that no, you’re not going to be swept off on a perilous/fun/illuminating adventure. You’re not the chosen one*.
The teen dream hasn’t really changed for a long time. Sure, the fashion is updated and the cultural references shifted, but the essentials remain as a strange fantasy. The schema of (generall all-American high school-oriented) teenage life is ingrained into the public consciousness, whether you grew up watching Grease, Gilmore Girls or Riverdale. It’s inescapable, crossing space, time and genre to let you know that you’re being a teenager wrong.
Reading or watching these types of adolescent narratives is often, now, a little painful. I find myself nostalgic for something I never experienced, filled with the feeling that I missed out on something that never really existed. The expectations of the teenage experience are unachievable and greatly unfair. On screen the ‘teenagers’ are in their 20s, and the majority of novels are written through the inescapable lens of an adult. Adolescence is hard enough as it is without constantly measuring it against criteria that will never be met.
It’s absolutely possible to say that I just had a boring teenage life because I am not a cool person, to which I say: yeah, maybe. I know there are people whose lives were a little closer to the exploit-filled lifestyle I expected, but as my non-scientific evidence of several films, social media posts and conversations with friends has taught me, it’s pretty common to feel a sense of emptiness about your teenage years.
Even if I’d checked some of the teen fantasy boxes, my life wouldn’t have been the one I’d envisioned for myself at 11, or 13, or 16. Between Covid and various other life interruptions, years 18 to 20 at university didn’t go as expected either. I’ve accepted that the clock has ticked its last tock for the chance of the teenage life I imagined, but I still find myself lamenting the fact that I never got a full-length locker. How different could things have been if I had?
* I wore my promotional “I am not the chosen one” t-shirt from Patrick Ness’ novel for many, many years, maybe in an attempt to reverse-psychology the universe into some dramatic irony.