I would occasionally read the genx subreddit, where people would say “we” did this and that, much of which didn’t apply to me, and which no one would bother to push back on.
And I’m reading a pop science book about brains, and it’s doing the usual thing about how immature teen brains are and what their behavior is like.
How true is it that “we” were taking crazy risks and being monsters to our families and so forth?
I was a good kid—although admittedly I was in an abusive home—but also if I think back to school, there are a good number of kids who didn’t seem to be awful, although maybe just seeing someone at school doesn’t tell you much.
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It was a long time before I even learned (from reading what others had to say about their teens and early 20s) that a “normal” person was trying on lots of identities/subcultures to see where they could be coolest and most liked and also that they were looking around for specific cool people they wanted to be like and copying them.
If I try to think who was cool whom I could have wanted to be, I don’t really think of anyone. Maybe I had a strong sense of myself, or maybe I wasn’t around people I thought that highly of, or maybe I was just very certain I was never going to be cool so I shouldn’t embarrass myself by trying.