Back in the 90’s (don’t I sound old) they seemed like something else, something mysterious, free, rebellious, even gallant. I thought of them as something beyond my young understanding, something that was deep, and hard to understand, and it was the peak of all human transcending. They were no longer children, and yet they were not adults; they were a mystic creature in between.

I remember I looked up to them in respect, but in an accomplice kind of respect, a sympathetic bow if you will. Why? Well, they were talked about amongst adults, they were described all as animalistic, uncontrollable, even criminal who were reckless, every single one of them. They were to be feared, they were to be stopped, and they were an idol. And the thought of such a creature that would even scare the adults, who at the time seemed to me like an unquestionable authority, was enough to consider them myths, to see them as roaming wanderers behind a curtain on mystery, drugs, sex, and rock and roll.

Whenever I looked at them, I recall thinking what it would be like, to be them, to have this separate universe where anything could happen, where one was allow anything, where one was to be daring and in the top of the world. They didn’t seem insecure, they were just fed up of stability; they weren’t stupid, they were audacious. And I believe this is because I thought of them as people, not like us children. We were no one, we were dressed as our mothers would command because we were just children, we would be thought as funny when saying something stupid, because after all we were just that, children. We were not expected or permitted to act like people. But them, well, with them it was a complete different story, they no longer played by the rules, or had to, they made their rules, their world, which they own every bit of it. They were people, without having to be boring adults.

And this myth I had about the youth did not stop at their unspoken war against rules and adults. I thought of them as strong, beautiful, sassy and intelligent humans, who had most likely never been children. They each were special in their own way, all of them defied the very laws of nature, they could conquer the world but were just dulled by it, they could take over the minds of everyone but were just uninterested. And having this idea in mind, any adolescent who I found with no charm, no luck and no wit was just an overgrown child, nothing special about him. In this way, there could be none that wasn’t amazing; the ones who weren’t just… were not part of the group.

And I’m not very sure why I had this thoughts about this tribes, or why would I give that much importance to that group. It could possibly be just the beginnings of my love for rebellion and decadence; it could be that I never felt in my age range. Or it could be that they were simply super humans, who were kind enough to walk among us.

But with the years, and the 00’s (if that’s what we’re calling them) I realized the latter was maybe an idea I should revise.

When I hit the age of 13 I knew it would happen, I knew that puberty would arrive and make it all gross and large, and awkward. But I also knew the doors to that secret legacy of special beings would begin to open. Needless to say, I had to wait a while… And the fact is that my expectancy of belonging to that admired universal army of rouges did not change. This meant that I was still expecting, still waiting to be one of them, to see my peers get there, and all together we would travel the Atlantic on canoes, we would fly to the end of the world with nothing but kites made of hopes and dreams. We would take over the world.

But for some reason the stupid kids were now the stupid puberts, the once fart and buggers jokes were now the sex and –other fluids- ones. The world at 13 or 14 hadn’t really changed as I thought it would. I was waiting for everyone to have some melodramatic situation every week so I could come up with some witty and sympathetic solution that would for some reason work better for me than it did on the TV. And all I had was Jimmy Nobody and Joe Underacomplisher, whose parents fought over Christmas dinner. This wasn’t the world I had been seeing all those years. But all and all, maybe it was the people who surrounded me, so I waited.

And as time went by, and I observed people, they, I mean we, were not audacious, we were stupid kids who borrowed someone mother’s car under the influence and drove like crazy people. We were not fed up with stability; we secretly craved for it, look under the rocks to find it in whatever presentation it came. And most certainly we were not people; we were far from being such entities, we were lost and large children playing the game of being old, of having power and we played to have fun.

I will admit there were some which shared characteristic of the rebellious ways I praised as child, there were those who dared enough to play the actual role. But that was all it was, a role. They drank like pirates, they danced like go go girls, they drove like Meteor, they had sex like groupies, but when the lights went off, and their mask no longer could be seen, they were just that, roles. And sometimes, just sometimes, there was a real people under that art craft of a face. I happened to be lucky enough to find a few.

Then, for some time I thought that was it, that this masked phonies and their fancy lives with their fancy stories were it, the image I had long formed and revered was diminished to these people who I could see trough, that all the waiting and all the expecting had been for that, to find out my vision as a child was an illusion. And in a way it was true, there is no such thing as that much of a large group of people who are all awesome, who are all in a blood pact of changing and revolutionizing the world.

Because for what now I have learned, it is not about the age, or the stupid coiffures, or the slutty clothes. The core of this war against establishment did not belong to the teenagers, it never did; it just seemed like it. It belongs to those who refuse to wear a mask, it belongs who those who dare to speak against the majority for a cause, it belongs to the ragged-trousered guy playing the guitar in the rain, just for the love of music, it belongs to the girl in the yellow dress who insists on riding the bicycle to work even if it’s some kilometers away, it belongs to the bloggers without readers who keep writing for the love of it, it belongs to just a few of us. Maybe not people, maybe not all teenagers, but we exist; as stupid and insecure as the next guy, but here.

by I'm the penguin