28 March - Teenagers & Teen movies

My friend Anne, after a long and tortuous process has finally become a foster parent. Not full time, just started with respite for another carer at weekends. Her foster kid (fk for short) is a young woman aged nearly 16 so they’re busy bonding over watching teen movies (you’re never too old for those though fk couldn’t care less if the plot of ‘She’s the Man’ is actually lifted from ‘Twelfth Night’). One thing that disconcerts Anne is that she finds she fancies the 20something male leads and not only that.. they all seem similarly handsome and are coiffed in similar fashion to the covers of the teen romance books she read approx 30 years ago. This seems to worry her as there's a limit to how much of a Demi More you can do. Other bonding is taking place over hair straightening sessions and manicures. Anne is now however enjoying shopping downmarket on high streets where she squeals ‘shoes for £7.50? wow!’ . It’s a new world.
She’s also getting with it with some updates on modern slang and realising that saying ‘wicked’ is deeply embarrassing post ’85. Fk is a hip hop/rap fan and naturally Anne is finding the lyrics offensive, preposterous, downright pernicious and so on. Though she doesn’t mind the thumping bass. Which brings us to the subject of language and how fk thinks anyone who uses long words is posh. Anne pointed out Victoria Beckham is called posh and doesn’t know any long words clearly from her utterances to the press or ‘I’ve never read a book’ statements. Fk says a propos her sketchy GSCE work that she can’t be bothered to spell correctly words that she will never use. ‘I don’t use them words so I don’t care how they’re written’. You’d think she had some tongue twister in mind but they were discussing a simple one such as… ‘despite’. You’d think fk was asked to write down ‘silhouette’ or ‘curmudgeon’. The meaning of which she didn’t know. Come to think of it I’m not sure of the second one myself.

Anne is also experiencing her first instances of the ‘You can’t go out in that? You’ll be freezing’ or ‘You simply must eat fruit/stop drinking 2lt of cola a day’ etc. but not to the extreme of parents. Let’s face it, some battles will never be won and she’s still unsure of how to fight them. This is jumping in at the teenager end of growing up and having missed out plenty of child rearing development. Can’t be more different than inheriting your divorced partner’s kids you’d think, except that those know their parents love them and feel loved by them? Whilst fk had had the life of a parcel at pass the parcel. She’s not a happy child.
On the anecdote front, not many to report but The Police came on TV music channel singing ‘Don’t stand So Close to Me’ and Anne said quite carelessly ‘Who are they?’ So much for Sting’s enduring sex appeal across the decades. He’s a nobody as far as she’s concerned. She also thought that the mini disc came before tapes because her logic said that, well yes, tapes are still around whilst mini discs are not, hence they must be a format predating the cassette.