Delinquenisms.

I’ve decided to title all posts which detail acts of juvenile delinquency as “Delinquenisms”, since it seems wholly appropriate.

So, every now and then I experience something which reminds me that, underneath the fancy words and misconcieved notions of maturity, I am still just a teenager.
Today was the first day of our school holidays, and I spent it at a friend’s house. It was his sixteenth birthday, and he’d invited a random assortment of characters both from our school and neighbouring schools. They were all a cool group of people though, and all had a good sense of humour.
The first thing we did as a group was to walk down to the nearby park, where some of us played football and chased away the joggers on the track while others vandalised the bleachers. From there, we went to the children’s playground and crowded the top of the Rope Tower; as the name suggests, it’s a tower of rope we needed to climb. Of course, we were the only ones on the tower since parents steered clear of us, and the kids seemed frightenend. (For the record, I didn’t condone the scaring of children. Anyone who read my post from yesterday will know that I love kids. But I digress.)
After everyone was at the top of the tower, looking over the heads of the crowd, some of the girls decided that the guys in our group ought to play a game of Gay Chicken. (For those of you playing at home, that’s when two heterosexual males put themselves in increasingly awkward positions until one of the pair feels too uncomfortable and chickens out). It was entertaining, to say the least.
The day passed with most of the group going down to the skate park, running down to the creek, and being generally annoying in public places. Later, while the group went on a bike ride, my friend “C” and I separated ourselves from the group to go for a walk around the neighbourhood.

While we were alone, “C” revealed a few things to me about our mutual friend “L” that had me momentarily too stunned for words.

To cut a long story short: “L” is a wonderful girl, who I’ve considered a good friend for the last five years. She’s almost sixteen (in fact, I believe her sixteenth birthday is tomorrow). Since last September, I’ve been aware of her relationship with a boy who is, well, older than sixteen (by three years, if I’m not mistaken). While I couldn’t approve her choice, I’d known her well since grade school, and decided to shut my mouth and trust her judgement.

“C” informed me today that “L” and her boyfriend had been, to put it lightly, doing “more than just holding hands” over the last six months and, apparently, she recently found out that the boyfriend had been doing “more than just holding hands” with more than one girl. The resulting break-up happened about a week ago, and “B” has been in a bad state ever since. Before I had time to process this news, “C” proceeded to put the cherry on this espial sundae. Apparently, in a moment of depressed vulnerability, “L” had… uh… propositioned our friend “H”. (The term ‘proposition’ here meaning an improper suggestion, to say the least).

“H” refused on the grounds of being in a relationship with “C”.

In hindsight, the last few paragraphs look embarrassingly like a gossip column, and drained some of my hard earned self-respect. The point of it all was just that, today, for the umpteenth time this week, I thought about how very little I know my friends and how very little they probably know me. I find it curious, and truth be told, frightening.

Anyway, after all the gossip subsided and we rejoined the group, it had gotten dark and we played murder in the dark in the park, using the night vision goggles we had all chipped in to buy for the birthday boy. We listened to music, ate, drank, pummelled a spongebob-shaped pinata and around 7.00 I headed back home.

The party was fun, but it gave me a lot to think about.

I’m in a weird, reflective sort of mood at the moment, guys.
I’ll spare you the torture of reading through my muddled thoughts in the form of poorly constructed sentences by finishing my post here.

Goodnight, and happy holidays.