Nostalgia Blues

The irresistible power of nostalgia pulled me through two whole episodes of Channel Ten's new Australian drama, Puberty Blues. 

I read Puberty Blues, the novel on which the series is based, when I was in high school, and I saw the movie. The show is filmed in the Sutherland Shire where I spent all my teenage years. One of the main sets is my old school, Caringbah High. Close enough to thirty years have passed since I climbed those steps and walked those halls: a purposeless teenager living for the moment, for the weekend booze up and the girls. Watching Puberty Blues took me straight back to memories so vivid I can still smell them and taste them. As soon as I recognized what was happening, I should have switched channels. This was way too close to home.

Perhaps I wanted the show to say something profound so that I could excuse its vulgarity. Perhaps, a part of me still yearns for those hedonistic days when I was the only person who mattered. Perhaps, to my shame, I simply enjoyed the titillation.

Whatever the reason, I watched a sexually frustrated husband masturbating in his bathroom, a teenager bribing her primary school aged brother with cigarettes, an eager to please teenage girl fellating some guy on the beach, a teacher staggering around drunk at a party attended by his students, an intoxicated group of parents playing strip poker, a young man buying a bag of marijuana from an ice cream van, and smoking it on his bed, and the straw that broke this camel's back: a teenage girl passively lying on the beach, in full view of her group of friends, being sexually used by her boyfriend.

I felt sad and sickened, and I still do. Puberty Blues appears to be a glorification of what is base and animalistic about humans. Young people who don't know who they are, trying hard to be someone they think they want to be, and doing things they shouldn't be doing. Following each other as they stumble through the darkness of immorality.

I thank God everyday for rescuing me from that pathetic existence.

Schoolies Outrage Over the Top

In this nation of virtual alcoholics, the moral outrage spewing from the media about the behaviour of teenagers on the Gold Coast during 'schoolies' week is an absolute joke.

The event gets talked about and heavily publicized every year so naturally it prospers in the fertilizer of notoriety.It looks like such fun, doesn't it? Makes you wish you were a teenager again so you could spend a whole week drunk and dancing. Throw in the absence of parents and a bit of sex and you are in Heaven. No wonder non school leavers, go to schoolies as well. No wonder it's such a popular event. Thousands of teenagers just having fun.

I want to be a part of that fun. I want to get so drunk that I spend an hour vomiting. I want be smashed so the next day I can't remember what I did the night before. It will be great when someone tells me how I humiliated myself by not being able to stand up. At least they might be able to help me explain the injuries I sustained. I want to spend the night with some girl who is too intoxicated to remember the word 'no.' That would be awesome. I want the alcohol to take away my inhibitions so I can show everyone my penis, and then I can abuse the policemen who try to get me to pull my pants up. Yeah, I'd love to give the cops the finger and abuse them for trying to interfere with my fun.

I want to be so rotten that I fall over and hit my head on the footpath. If I bleed a lot, I'll get loads of sympathy and have a great story to tell in the accident and emergency department at the hospital.If I drink enough, I might even fall into a coma. How cool would that be? Better still, if I drown in alcohol and then go swimming, I could drown in the ocean. Unreal!

I'm not a wowser, and I do drink alcohol in moderation, but none of the above is what I would call a good time. I can actually enjoy myself without alcohol. That was my idea of a fun when I was 16 but Jesus rescued me from that dead end self destructive way of life when I was young. Who is going to rescue our young people before they make the biggest mistake of their lives, or die, or kill someone else? If you think I'm exaggerating, check out the statistics.

Or just laugh it off, and have another drink. That's the Australian way.