Was I too that annoying when I was a teenager?

Just curious. Recently, I have reacted to how increasingly irritating local teenagers can be. Especially the girls. Today I was in a store and was coming up the escalator to the second floor, and side by side stood 3 teenage girls, looking bored and blowing bubbles with their chewing gum. Teased, messy hair and skanky tights and loads of makeup. Yikes! I must be getting older. I had hoped that I would never have to lay eyes on a pair of Converse again. I wore those in junior high and as always with me and fashion, once I leave something behind I can never go back. I develop a real aversion to it and will never again get the urge to wear it, such as vests and shoulder pads.

Well what is most annoying about teenagers isn't the clothes, although I must admit that seeing stubby legs squeezed into sheer leggings isn't exactly pleasant, it's that they're self-centered. It's a drama show whenever they get on a bus and clip-clop down the aisle to the back seats. They walk in and look as if they're expecting all of us to be watching them in awe, because they're so incredibly cool. I deliberately stare out the window, refusing to pay attention to them. I've become like a Geography prof I had once, who told the class she used to do this.

I must admit, I too was once this self-centered. At 14, I thought I was all grown up and devastatingly pretty. Why is it that we're so self-centered when we're kids and teenagers? Do we look for recognition? Do we think we know everything? The answer to the last question is of course, yes.

Sometimes I see girls that I pity. Girls that are unattractive and that you can just see don't really fit in, but who try anyway. Those are the girls that I feel the most sorry for. They hang out with the more attractive, self-assured girls and they try to dress accordingly but it just looks so horribly sad. They have this look about them, as though they come from abusive or poor households, and I get this mental image of them pleading with their parents to buy them the kind of shoes that all the other girls wear. I see them in the malls with their scrawny shoulder bags, like ghosts beside the popular, pretty girls, and I see the store clerks watch them like a hawk to make sure they don't steal anything. They're trying. That's the sad part. It's not that they're unattractive or don't fit in, it's that they have to try so hard, and yet we all know that they will never be the ones to get the admiring looks from boys.

I never fit in either but I never really cared. I was content with belonging to a small group of social outcasts. I'm glad I wasn't one of these ghostly girls whose life is one endless struggle to fit in and get noticed. But then, isn't this typical teenage life.

Equally annoying, but quite sad as well, are the teenage boys with dead eyes. You can find them all over. Boys with baggy pants hanging halfway down their asses, showing off their underwear, always with the same blank expression on their faces. Where the boys like this when I was a teenager? I don't remember. It's that expression that makes me fear for what the future holds for our society. Will coming generations be walking zombies? Skanky girls and boys with dead eyes. Of course not, they'll grow out of it, we all do. It's just a phase in their development. Right?

Oh, why is it that every generation complains about the one after theirs?