It's only pain

So no disrespect to teens- teens deal with some heavy stuff sometimes- life or death even. I dealt with some of that as a teen- but most of it- it was dumb. As a teen I thought it was so important- so and so wants to throw down or this thing I want is this big deal or the pain of this romance or rejection would destroy me, this relationship meant everything blah blah. And almost always it wasn’t as intense or serious as my inexperienced and hormonally unbalanced brain thought. Few crises were what they were in my head. This is often the case. To capture the feelings of intensity and grandiosity or impact or being young. It can also be the case that as we age, and high school fiction is often made by people out of high school, people who may inject some elements of fantasy- the way they WISHED high school was or people who may have placed more weight on these memories as they’ve aged.

Well hey, don't beat yourself up too much. Most adults would be scared or useless too. And then there's the dumb, whiny, and useless adults which are also portrayed in movies where the "kids" outsmart them, or overpower them etc.... Kid me loved that stuff. Now as an adult that works with kids? I don't care what kind of training they have a 6-10 year is not going to overpower any reasonably fit adult in a "fair" fight. And a whole school worth of children may eventually wear down a trained adult but I wouldn't be placing any bets on the kids.

So I never understood the whole “these are the best years of your life” thing- not then and not after. I found my college and young adult years much better than high school. As I’ve aged my freedom and resources have tended to increase. I feel I’ve grown slightly wiser and more experienced over time. I’ve been able to do things and have experiences as I’ve aged that have been amazing and I couldn’t have dreamed of in high school. But…. I’ve grown to understand a bit. It isn’t that those years are free of troubles or that you aren’t sometimes bored or overwhelmed or disappointed. It’s that it becomes rarer and rarer as you age to be able to experience the world the same way or feel the same intensity and wonder. People doffer but for myself and everyone I’ve ever spoken to on the subject- you may have many relationships or loves but none are quite the same as those first or early ones.

Even “firsts” you haven’t experienced don’t tend to feel the way “firsts” did then. The possibility of the world and even any specific moment don’t seem quite as broad. In general I’d guess that even with new things and people you have some sense of expectation- some idea of how things will likely be or the way things may go. True surprises and new experiences without some context to draw from are rarer. The world is more familiar and routine. So I mean- of course few if anyone has a high school experience like fiction, but most analogs have analogs of sorts. Most people have high school lives that if someone had secretly filmed every moment could be edited into some sort of “high school” fiction- a comedy or a romance or drama or whatnot. Even if we dismiss it and think “no- really- I didn’t have an experience ANYTHING like that..” some people really have very different experiences but usually we just sort of create a narrative of our lives and see it from that perspective.

@lucky11- lol. Thank you. I’m not too torn up over the realization that when I was 10 or so I probably wasn’t ready to operate at the level of a special forces operative or such. I agree with your assessment. And it is true that there are movies where kids beat adults- home alone and such- usually more “kids” oriented films and such than more serious or “grownup” stories. Even most of the “family” stuff the kids were whack. Original list in space- sure Will did some cool stuff and had robot- but he also was always causing trouble or getting in trouble and needing bailed out or being tricked etc. a lot of cartoons like Johnny Quest or Speed Racer, Boxey in Battle Star Galactica (TOS) and so forth. More annoying is liabilities than aspirational for a young kid.

I’d say likewise that most teens don’t particularly enjoy watching “realistic” teens in most fiction. How many teens are so fond of other teens let alone themselves? The internet and much of its humor runs on teenaged self hatred. As a teen- seeing a realistic version of myself on screen would be more likely to cause me second hand embarrassment or self consciousness than happiness. Children, adults, teens. We tend to like to see idealized versions of ourselves. The slackers and “nerds” and “dorks” in fiction tend to be somehow cooler or more successful or more attractive or luckier etc. than most real life viewers who might identify with them. Jocks are jockier and hipsters are hipper and such. Just like we tend to dislike our voice on recording we tend to not like our true image- we prefer a version that suits our idealized self image.