Taexalia

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Teenage Mutant Idiot Syndrome

I am sitting here pondering the prompt for this week's Sunday Scribblings and a particular memory dances from the shadows and presents itself to me. Since my reaction is to stuff it back into the realms of secrecy and find something else to write about, I am guessing it meets the requirements of scandalous...

It was somewhere in the realms of early to mid teenagehood and it was the time of the end of year school disco. Now we were all in the middle of Thatcher induced teacher's strikes and industrial action and so there were no extra curricular activities being organised, handled or supervised by the schools. As I type I realise that I might actually be able to lay the blame for this sorry incident on Maggie :-D , after all it's still fashionable to blame her for everything else.

To compensate for the lack of a school disco, some sixth formers decided to organise one off their own backs and they chose a nightclub as the alcohol free venue. My friends and I were naturally excited at the prospect of a) visiting a nightclub and b) kissing boys and we felt very grown up about the whole thing.

On the night of the party I got myself dressed up and left my home to echoes of "Yer nae gan oot dressed like that!" and "Have ye nae sense?!" which suggests that I was functioning somewhat normally as a teenager. I recall that I was dressed in black leggings and a short black miniskirt, complimented by a black lace shirt over a black vest and topped off with a weird shaped long turquoise cotton shirt. Accessories included lots of bangles, lots of beaded necklaces and crosses and a pair of cut up tights as a hairband.

You would be forgiven for thinking it was October and I was going to a Halloween Party, but it was in fact June and I was being radical and creative and emulating the newest and hippest style icon of the time, Madge.

When I met up with my friends, one of them produced a large plastic bottle that appeared to be full of Coca Cola. This friend had said she would be providing us with a drink and she did not tell a lie. It needs to be noted at this point that the author was pretty naive as far as alcohol is concerned - previous exploits being limited to a snifter of shandy at Hogmanay that wasn't exactly an education in how not to do it. This friend was also the most worldy wise and experienced person I knew. She was cool and I felt it was my job to at least try to be as cool as her.

So when this bottle was handed to me, the stench was almost enough to knock me out. I was informed it was "a mixie" and of course it would have been uncool to blanch and hand it back without sampling. In fact teenage bravado dictated that I pour several large swigs down my throat and then hold the bottle up in triumph with one of those old man whisky shot gasps I had seen in old western films. I was cool, wasn't I?

And that is about the last thing I remember. It seems the mixie was quite a potent cocktail and my rather young body was a bit overcome with it all. One can only guess at what happened between then and the point, hours later, when the screeching policewoman finally managed to extricate my phone number from my brain and telephone my poor Mother. I believe they found me lying alone in a doorway so they took me to the cells to sober me up - a process which involved stripping my two shirts off and leaving me in a freezing cold cell without a blanket and yelling at me every so often, apparently under the assumption that I actually had a clue about where I was, why I was there and what was happening to me. I gather they thought I looked 10 years older - and this explained the rather nasty treatment and the lack of a stomach pump.

My Mother had to come and claim me, and one could have forgiven her if she had decided to tell them they had the wrong number or if she had offered me up for adoption. As a bratty teenager I imagine was full of excuses and self-righteousness and blame casting - probably all borne from the injustice of being caught. As an adult writing this some 20 plus years later, I am mortified. Scandalised.

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Posted on November 7, 2008 in Creativity, Ponderings.

One Response to “Teenage Mutant Idiot Syndrome”

  1. Pat formerly Hawkwolf says:
    November 20, 2008 at 2:52 pm

    Ah Taexalia, I found your pages today, and this one made me realize I had to comment! It brings back some not so fond teenage mutant idiot syndrome memories of my own. We all have them, you know.

    It was my 16th birthday. There was a surprise party planned for me (I didn’t know). I finally found one friend who would do something with me. She was older than me, and got us a couple of bottles of some cheap wine. We were so cool! (NOT) We sat in a parking lot in her rickety VW bug and drank most of both bottles. We were just talking about getting something to eat when my best friend came up and said, “There you are, I’ve been looking everywhere for you. You have to come with me now.” And I went.

    We drove to the beach and got out of her car…and there were more than 20 people yelling, “Surprise!” At least I got something to eat! But somehow I wound up with a bottle of 151 Rum (151 proof). The beach was being repaired, and there were artificial dunes (just piles of sand, really) waiting to be utilized. I could easily have gone around them. But in my drunken state, I carefully climbed each one to the top, and fell down to the bottom. My bottle of “151″ got sandy. I stopped drinking it at some point, but continued to carry it around with me. Yet, that was not the end of my embarassment, and sadly I can’t say that I don’t remember…

    Some older kids from the next county came to the beach, and I demanded (as the birthday girl) that they be allowed to stay. As their benefactor, I led them around, and ultimately, we left the party together. At some point in the wee hours of the morning, I realized I didn’t know these kids…and the girls among them had left. So there I was with four strange guys. We were at a park with a playground, and I was on the swings. I don’t know if it was something they said, or if I happened to sober up a little. I left the swings and climbed up to the top of a tall pine tree, and refused to come down.

    Neither threats nor cajoling would persuade me out of that tree. It was a chilly night. By that point, I was rapidly sobering up, and equally afraid of the long climb back down, and of these strangers! One of the guys climbed up after me, and as I was kicking at him and stepping on his fingers, several of my good friends drove up in a car. One of them climbed up and helped me to safely negotiate my return to the ground. By then, my stomach felt like it was filled with broken glass. I was afraid, cold, and exhausted. As it happened, those guys were harmless, and we all became friends later. I know it could have been quite different. I was lucky to have so easily have survived my own teenage mutant idiot syndrome. There were other idiotish adventures, of course! But none like that one…

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