As our daughter and I waited in the enrollment queue this afternoon, we were accompanied by a couple of lads who insisted on talking to one another as if they were gangsters.
While I hid my dismay, our daughter dispensed with diplomacy and provided a running commentary on their “idiocy” as they boasted of their academic ineptitude and brushes with the law.
This went on for hours, as the staff grappled with an extremely sluggish enrollment platform.
As our daughter grew impatient with our companions, I suggested that maybe we should not judge the young men based on their banter. Peer pressure makes young men behave in peculiar ways after all.
As if to reinforce that point, one of the lads received a phone call just then, at which point he completely forgot he was a gangster. In place of crude speech, he was suddenly polite, his imitation patois all gone.
Our daughter was unimpressed. “That’s so two-faced,” she spluttered. “Why don’t they just grow up?”
Her observations carried me thirty-one years back in time to my enrollment at college. My mate and I were the idiots then, pretending to be what we weren’t. And others took on our eldest’s role as fearless observers delivering cutting barbs.
I cringe thinking back to those days. I wonder if these lads will ever look back on these the same way. In a few years’ time, will they look back, shaking their heads at themselves, spitting “idiot” into the mirror? Certainly, I still do that all these decades on.
Last modified: 22 August 2024
