Exotic Teen Culture

Don't you hate it when the amazing blog you thought of at 1am Sunday morning does not come fully formed when you attempt to put it down at 1pm Sunday afternoon?

Anyhow, last night was another big Saturday night here, and the television offerings at Mummy-clock-off time were absolutely dismal.

I also hate it when you are anticipating a lovely night in at the flicks, and there is nothing worth flicking?

Luckily for us, we live in the modern era and V's mother did send him a lovely little number reminiscent of both the years of adolescence and Southern California school days - Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and so we watched it.

Did we ever think some fashions and styles were cool?

When discussing it, I noticed that V and I approached it from very different angles - and it wasn't just the male/female thing at play.

V lived through such behaviour and agonies of the interpersonal dramas (well, not all of them) in real life high school and mall settings as shown on the screen.

I read about them, watched them, studied them - but the weirdness of being a boarder at an all girls school in the middle of Queensland meant that it was all very theoretical fodder.

As a matter of fact, being a boarder at an all girls school in the middle of Queensland was not weird at all, to me and all the girls around me - it was what we knew (didn't always love) and in most of our cases, what we knew we would be when we were teenagers.

So when I get comments about how quaint and Enid Blyton it must be, I laugh a little laugh to myself because it was not all that (I definitely don't remember many lashing of ginger beer) and what is quaint and Cameron Crowe for me was ordinary for so many of you.

We never did see the end of the movie, however. A toilet stop towards the end led to flicking around the offerings and discovering the last 3/4 of American Beauty - ah yes, it was a very cultural evening here.

How was yours?

My Love and Hate Affair with Facebook

I have discovered that I am as useless adept at using social media in the virtual world as I am in the real. Yep, that bad.

Many moons ago two of my friends invited me into the realm of Facebook, which, as they were my friends of many many more moons ago than that, I trusted them on and entered.

Having at that point just escaped the scorching heat of virus threats and had a new ally in some whizz bang software designed to save me from them. Well, all those lovely little fripperies offered up in Facebook just didn't look like fun to such whizz bang software and so I have no idea of all the delights.

Another problem I have with Facebook is it doesn't ever tell you really what is going on. On rare occasions it will tell me that one person wants to be my friend or its my move on Scrabulous, but really - it doesn't tell me EVERY time it is my move (and I need that information) NOR does (or did) it tell me about my

• Water Globe
• Bumper Sticker
• Hatching Egg
  
• 2 Grammar
• 2 Knighthood
• Funnest Friends
• 8 Lil Green Patch
• Endangered Hug
• Dr Phil Personality Test
• Causes
• Pink Ribbon
• Diamonds
• Which Toon
• Growing Gifts
• Sketch Me
• 2 Hugs
• Girls Underwear Quiz
• Cat Quiz
• Hatch a Celebrity
• What Rainbow Colour
• Cupcakes
• 3 How Many Kids
• Oregon Trail
• Booze Mail
• Australian Wallabies
• Likeness
• Best Friends
• What Colour Are You
• My Garden
• Funwall Friend
• Movie Compatibilty

tests, quizes, requests or messages. Oh, I now know they exist - however if I click on them either one of two things happen:

1. It tries to download an add-on, which my whizz bang software kyboshes and I never find out what real fun it is, or
2. In order to access it, I must pass it along to at least one (if not all) of my friends.

I don't know if my Facebook experience is reflected in other such sites - its a bit like Hellfire Clubs - they may not all be the same, but you only have to look once to get an idea what is going on in there.

Frankly, Facebook, I don't give a damn. I do give a damn about my friends, and I do try to send them a message if I ever get past the first freak out Facebook offers - but frankly - if you want to know what I am doing, thinking, feeling or whinging about, far better come here.

As to any other social media - scares me to death and I hate being a luddite - by it is not my idea of fun being measured in popularity in any aspect of life, especially online.

Phew, glad I got that off my chest.

So, if you want me to know how you are going? Get a blog! I will get your feed and feel we have connected.

lol - okay, real life friends, I will call you back if you call me (and when I remember - sorry!!). And if you want to come visit Paradise, feel free. And if you want to coincide with the wedding of the century - yes, yes, just as soon as we organise anything YOU WILL BE THE FIRST TO KNOW.

In which Ms Salina is extremely cheeky (and regresses her mother)

Yesterday, after a wonderful afternoon of not annoying a migrainey (yes, AGAIN) Mummy while having a tea party with her new best friend from 2 doors down, 'Salina overfilled her indulgence quota and went scarily close to being in BIG TROUBLE.

See, the problem is that 'Salina has a tendency towards precociousness (I wonder where THAT came from) and, while it can be endearing and cute in small doses, it has a tendency to do certain adults heads in (especially migrainey heads) given in large quantities over extended periods - and the threshold was overreached yesterday afternoon.

"Stop being so cheeky" I screeched. However, even as I screeched, I remembered a certain incident 25 years ago that was scarily close to being re-enacted.

---

I mentioned previously that I spent some time in boarding school.

Now, boarding school is one place where the threshold for cheek is quite low. Imagine the average cheek of the average teenage girl and multiply by 200 - that is what is designed to send boarding school mistresses over the precarious ledge tethering them in the belief they are in the sane realm.

In an attempt to restore sanity to the average boarding school mistress (easier said than done), draconian rules and regulations were installed and rigorously adhered to.

Eventually I did learn and worked out how to dole out my cheek in methods designed to slip through the cracks and fissures - but that was about my second year of boarding school. In my first year, I hit their sanity threshold on many an occasion.

There was the moment when I broke my toe playing truth, dare. There were the times when I broke music study regulations. There was many an instance when I had to stand through meals. And then there was church.

We were a non-denominational school - which meant that every Christian religion was offered to boarders every second Sunday. To keep costs down, the majority (Anglicans) were sent to early church, and the buses then took a second load of boarders to late church of their choice.

Drawing the short straw and being christened Anglican meant you had to be up earlier than your luckier Catholic, Uniting, Lutheran, Protestant, Presbyterian or Baptist sisters. It means you got the cold breakfast as the kitchen staff were not going to indulge at such an early hour. It meant being dressed in your "white with gold trim safari suits" (otherwise dubbed "Ten-Tonne-Tessie Dresses") and Panama hats before 6.30am to be bussed to the Anglican Cathedral.

I really feel for the good worshippers at that place, as their early morning crowd was well and truly outnumbered by the little heathens that we were. One good game in church was to see if you could get all around you scratching by tipping your Panama back and having a go - then there was the yawning contests and giggles and whispers as the poor mistresses attempted to put out fires.

But the really superior (?) thing about going to first church, was if you got up someone's nose enough, you could get detention - which meant double church.

And yours truly did some great nasal investigation during her first year.

It got to a point that Mrs L, the matron, would just look at me in the morning, find any detail to get me on and sentence me to save another mistress the hassle at a later stage.

By third term, I had spent the majority of Church Sundays in Anglican first church and then another denomination of their choice. I subsequently have absolutely no time for organised religion!

Mrs L greeted me this one morning about how messy I was. This was an ongoing banter we had going, earning me a special name from Mrs L of "Princess Grot".

Anyway, I think I may have grunted or not been quite humble enough in the face of her opinion, thus I received the usual "double church" admonishment. "Whatever" may have been my reply - it was definitely my attitude.

To put it into polite words, her threshold broke and she upped the ante. "Double church until the end of term!" Again, I failed to heed the flashing caution signs and may have replied something about whether that was the best she could come up with - don't quote me on it.

"DOUBLE CHURCH UNTIL THE END OF THE YEAR!!!" she thundered, turning a lovely shade of purple. Her only bolthole after this was until the end of time, so I shrugged, rolled my eyes and taunted her to use it. She saw that she had nothing left to offer and she was infuriated that such punishment no longer worked.

She did retire at the end of that year - I am sure I had nothing to do with it, as she was already 106 and had been threatening to retire for years.

---

Anyhow, back to my own daughter, and her moments of driving Mummy (and V) mad.

Where was I?

Oh yes, "Stop being so cheeky" I screeched.

"What is cheeky?" said the monkey 'Salina. Word to the wise - not the phrase to employ if trying to defuse a situation.

"Cheeky is giving a smarty answer rather than just doing what you are asked. Do as you are ASKED" I valiantly attempted not to be drawn.

"Oh, what do you mean by smarty?" says Ms Smarty-Pants the endangered 'Salina.

"J-U-S-T D-O A-S Y-O-U A-R-E A-S-K-E-D-!-!-!"

Later, I explained how, when we were children, we learned the definition of cheek from our parents. Ah, the good old days, when the threat of a belting or wooden spoon helped us in our understanding of the world.

Whatever happened to fear as a tool for parental control? There are moments when it would make my job so much easier.

Either that, or we are going to have to start threatening a bit of religion around here.

The Six Word Memoir Meme

sent to me by Mel at biglittlesister is driving me insane!

This is I am meant to do.
1. Write a six word memoir and post it on your blog.
2. Add a picture if you wish.
3. Link to the person who tagged you.
4. Tag 4 or 5 others, with links, to keep it going.
5. Leave a comment for the ones you tag with an invitation to play.
6. And link to the original post about the Six Word Memoir meme.

Okay - how the heck am I to memoirise in only 6 words, when it takes me 600 just to contemplate the last week - and not much happened in the last week?

How about "lippy ex-hippy verbosely procrastinates attempting wit"?

I am going to tag - umm - lets look at who I should tag because I would love their answers?

Cathy at Arkie Mama
Debby at Life's Funny Like That
Kate at Being Me, Just for Them
Bush Babe at Granite Glen
Alison at Three Times Kewl
and Lin at Hold On Tired

A trip to the talkies

It was indeed Charly!! Thank you blogworld (and the uncommentable V). I had thought so last night when I the memory of it flickered past in reference to something or other was having an insightful conversation with my lovely V about states of consciousness.

Glad we all got that worked out - but man, how good was the school, eh? We also got to see such beauties as Romeo and Juliet - yes, the Olivia Hussey version of 1968 (must have got a job lot from that year) and The Car - a relatively recent bomb from 1977.

(Just to clue you in, I was not born when 2 of those 3 movies were made and was still a child for the other, so they were made several movie seasons before the school showed them as the weekend movie for the boarders).

Every Saturday night, we were compelled by the staff of the school to watch the weekly movie in the old chapel. This was to ensure that we let our parents know how well we were treated in Jail at boarding school and set their minds at rest as to their having left their little darlings (and large school fees) in good hands.

You know that the 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet had a 15 year old playing Juliet? In the reel version shown at school, her voice was deeper than a grown man!

I went to boarding school in a town on the Tropic of Capricorn. You know, that ring around the world that says "mild weather" to the South of it, and "stinking hot" to the North?

The school year always kicked off in the heat of January, just as the cyclone season was starting to get a bit serious. Cyclones also knew the TOC line and respected it, always choosing to hover around it while it decided to create devastation to the North, or flooding to the South.

If far-flung boarders were lucky, one hit at the right time to delay their trip back to school for a few weeks - we were never quite far-flung enough to throw our timing.

Day girls could count on at least one good cyclone causing school to be cancelled and they could miss a day or so in the first few weeks - pity the plight of the boarder who was there. Stuck there.

Firstly, to fill the time, we had lots of "prep". Prep was when you had to sit in silence in a classroom with your school books and do whatever homework there was.

Of course, it mattered not to the boarding mistresses who presided over such torture that school had only been back a manner of days and we still had NFI what we were going to study that year, let alone do homework.

All that mattered to them was silence, it was bucketing down outside therefore they could not force us outside for a drenching (although they may have thought it well deserved), they could not leave us to our own devices in the boarding houses (because, OMG, consider adolescent girls cooped up in bedrooms for hours - and then multiply by 200) and maintaining silence - because

• (a) mistresses are badly paid women who should be able to do better jobwise, but life has dealt them a harsh blow and they are all recovering from breakdowns (okay, 90% of them) (and the other 10% will not be far off after dealing with boarders), and
  
• (b) far less rebellions succeed if conducted in silence.

Occasionally (like if it is the sixth straight day of cyclone warnings) the powers that be would rummage through the troves of movies available for hire in the reel version and take pity on us.

One such time was when providence sent the school such a title towards the end of one cyclone. Hurrah - the mistresses could stop haranguing us to do unset prep, they could coop us in one room with only one required to man the doors and the rest of the staff could take a well-earned tipple with the kitchen staff.

Unfortunately, the matron (who had been promoted to such a post due to her proximity and relative cheapness, not due to any aspirations to nursing) had thought Little Darlings must have been something like Seven Little Australians, which had met with such adult approval the decade previous.

It took about 20 minutes into the first reel before the sole mistress on duty discovered the mistake and raised the alarm - 20 minutes of such freedom had been unleashed onto very bored teenage girls, and then taken from our grasp as we were advised that the night's entertainment had been cancelled, and we could chose to do prep or watch a movie in the schools coffers (called The Turning Point).

But the disappointment was too great, really, and the moment of discovering teenage angst wrenched from our grip was too much for us. We chose prep over watching more grown women wrestle with theirs. We could do that anyway, any day - in prep.