I disappeared from the Wordsworth and words worth scene for a while as I’ve settled into wedded bliss- well second time around. Older – desperately trying to fight that, more mature- hopefully, promise not to make the same mistakes- do we ever follow through?
Things have changed, I am not in charge of my life anymore. One almost adult with barely-there whiskers and few hairs on the chest and another mid-teenager control my existence now. They know everything from sex to sin to wrong. Ask them anything about right and they will convince us what’s wrong about right. Well right aside, what’s wrong about what the kids of today convince you is their right style which is so wrong according to social diktat.
Now I’ve not laid down the diktat, it's been in existence forever, being tweaked by every generation in certain degrees. Just the bar is being raised ridiculously higher. Now my pet peeves are “Chill bro”, “What’s your deal Ma”, “YOLO”. Those are just expressions. Shall we slide into body language, ignoring you as they are having a bad day - which happens to be every few hours - or yes, “Love you and thank you for bringing us into this world” so that they can shout to me (as they are convinced am a little deaf) thank you for all the designer clothes and trips abroad and providing them with individual bedrooms so they can leave us wondering and worried whether we will be early grandparents inspite of our strong protestations.
I am actually exhausted with my belligerence, but hey I have just begun my rant, thank you Mr. Blog whoever –you-are-that-started the-blog-page, so other parents can read this and not feel alone. I am on my second marriage and countless relationships later, I still (according to my barely-there whisker and older and almost-teen) know nothing about love, lust and gender issues, as these issues have evolved with science or Eminem or whoever or whatever has had a greater impact. Watching Vampire Diaries off late and Sunny Leone who’s been given so much of print mileage, am convinced its not science.
I am not a prude, am considered highly fashionable and pretty risqué with my clothes choices post 8pm and yet I question the choice my almost teen wants to adorn her ears, nose, toes and other body parts with either no clothes or metal or whatever objects Rihanna and Izzy seem to be paid to sport. It’s a battle ground between father (yes he’s father for them - nurture wins over nature!) and five-times-pierced-teenager, as to why he’s not convinced by garters, thigh-high boots (which he calls “hooker boots”), she disagrees with raised eyebrows “Seriously??!” tone et al, and 3 button-open-shirt-with-cravat to a party which ends by 4 or maybe 5am. I sheepishly stay out of this as I have planted a few seeds of fashion in her head.
I know what you did last summer, do you know what I did this summer greets me as I walk through the door with my travel tote and suitcase. It sounds like a mild threat. She informs me, not seeks permission, that she has expressed her teenage philosophy about religion on her right shoulder blade in the High Valyrian script. Coming back to my peeves, it’s the curfew they dictate, and that they will be dropped home by some pimple-faced-scrawny-gelled hair-jeans-below-the-butt-crack-with-a-ghetto-swag-Goa beads around the neck-and 3 and 5 piercing on each ear, I’ve missed the one on the tongue punk home. That’s what’s wrong about the right or normal that I don’t seem to see or find with this generation.
Maybe my parents were too peeved over my torn jeans and cut off sleeves and coloured-scrunched-washed but uncombed-fingered-curls-hair. Choosing my career which was not banking or medicine or engineering, choosing the boy I went to marry and regret. I have just paused to sigh and remember my mother say, when you become a mother, you’ll see.
I had convinced myself that a generation gap does not exist but, based on the above rants, maybe a thin line does. So do we adapt, do we try to understand, walk in their shoes, I doubt that’s gonna happen as I do not see myself with 5 piercings or wearing garters or listening to Eminem or walking down with my pot-bellied, white-goateed, respectable-looking husband wearing beads with butt-crack showing jeans.
So I shall continue to find fault with the choice in careers : DJing, fashion blogging if that pays, long sabatticals to find themselves, choice in clothes and yes getting home well past curfew, which I would ideally like it to be 10.30 and God knows what else that I am not privy to. And as my son so rightly convinces me, "its how I want to live, it's how you perceive it".
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