Being only twenty years old, I can't say I know a lot about being an adult. I can't drive, I don't have a job and I certainly am not in a relationship of any sorts. I do like to think I am mature enough to be an adult though sometimes it might not seem it. I can dress a little young for my age and get overly excited about things like a small child but I am still only twenty with the long road of being an adult a head of me. However, I have just come out of what is universally known as 'the teen years', so I would like to think I know a thing or two about being a teenager. Though, I probably didn't have the 'normal' experience of being a teenager.
On a scale of being a complete and total shut-in to being an ASBO wielding 15 year with a criminal record as along as the complete works of Shakespeare; I am probably nearer the shut-in than anything else. My parents knocked some sense into me and I have them to thank. Otherwise I would probably be in hospital from running in front of a car or in prison, luckily that common sense for the most part has sunk it - I'm not perfect, I still do stupid things.
I was never one to rebel any, whilst everyone around me seemed to be going crazy on their hormones. At times I did wonder when they would kick in and I would go as crazy as everyone around me, just to understand what they were doing. I never experimented like many did. I tried once to get into a bar at seventeen but the bounce took one look at my pre-teen looking face and wouldn't allow me in. I never tried that again until I was eighteen and legal. At least I have some for of I.D. to prove my actual age. I wanted to dye my hair and once considered buying a box dye and then realised the next day I was going visiting my grandparents, and it was just wasn't worth it. I tried sneaking out, but I couldn't open my window because the key was missing, plus I am not the quietest of people considering I was in a phase of stamping everywhere like a herd of elephants.
There was a point I got obsessed with my looks but my family took control and stopped me doing something stupid.
Now as I have mentioned, I am not very old. I am only twenty years old and to perfectly honest, it feels like I've not drank the same water as most people my age. I must be in the minority who haven't gotten pregnant and had children, why in this day and age would people my age get pregnant and ruin pretty much all life prospects for them? I understand perfectly in years gone people got married and had children early in life but most people my age end up on welfare or end up with low prospects due to lack of education. At the same time I am aware this doesn't go for most teenage parents, but for most people I went to school this is the case. Out of maybe the fifty kids that were in my year, around six went onto sixth form and excluding myself there are only three at university - that I know of - and one has completed her apprenticeship.
Is this something, we as young people should be proud of? Personally I think it is something we should be ashamed of. Why should this be the social norm when it should be more socially abnormal. Why in this day and age do people think it is fine to throw away your prospects. I am lucky that I had the support of my family, who drilled common sense into me and that I had boundaries. I guess that this long ramble really is, is an odd way of me saying thank you to my family for not allowing me to drink the water of my peers that turned them into crazed animals and thanking my family for keeping me on the straight and narrow to keep me focused on what really mattered. Instead of allowing me to turn out like the masses.
