A young person asked me a while ago about what it was like when I was a teenager. I like to think that my memories are clear and it wasn’t that long ago, but it was a long time ago and the memories aren’t as sharp as they once were.
Most of us, when we are young, cannot picture our elders being young, but they were. These days, we have social media and such documenting everything we do from our birthdays to our breakfasts, so as long as there is power and internet service, your memories can be almost as fresh as their first occurrence.
Photographs fade. They lose their brilliance and become faded and dull in time and while the memory might be fresh, the evidence of it is not.
It occurred to me while I was speaking to this teenager that, unlike his generation, most of ours were pretty much the same.
When I was a teenager, growing up in central Maryland, most of our time was spent with our friends. There was no Facebook or TikTok and video games were in their infancy. A lot of the time, we just spent hanging around talking and listening to music.
Many nights were spent by my brother and me and a couple of other kids from the neighborhood standing in the light of a streetlamp talking. Never about anything particular, mind you, but the type of conversations you didn’t want to end because once the conversation was over, you had to walk home.
For a short while, there were no parents or teachers and you could talk about anything and say dirty words without punishment.
I remember one conversation where the four of us thought we should have some kind of name for our group. Realizing there were only the four of us and we never went anywhere where we would have to identify as a group, we quickly figured it was a crummy idea anyway and we dropped the subject.
There was one girl in our group, but we never really thought of her as a real girl. I mean, she was undeniably a girl, but she held her own with the three of us guys, so she was one of us. There were one or two fringe members, but since we lived on the street and they didn’t, they didn’t get the full benefits of being part of the permanent group. Don’t ask me what the benefits were, because I can’t remember.
The point I am making is the description above could have been from any decade of the 20th century. My grandfather had a group like this. In fact, my grandfather married his best friend’s sister. Not to be outdone, the friend married my grandfather’s sister. The four of them are still together, next to each other in the cemetery. Friends until the end.
This was 40 years before me and my group. The thing is, whatever generation, most of the stuff we did was the same. They would talk and listen to music and hang out, as would we. I asked my mother about her generation and it was exactly the same. It occurred to me that the great change came along with the advent of new technologies.
On any given Friday night, we would make an appearance at a high school sporting event. We didn’t really care about the game as it was more about being seen. Those of us who were not on the popular side of the spectrum didn’t really care about being seen so much as we were pretty much going through the motions.
I remember loaning a cute but frozen girl my coat at a football game. I figured she would see me as a wonderful gentleman. I was a schlub who never got his coat back. Afterward, we would all pack into someone’s car and go driving around. If we got adventurous, we would drive to Baltimore and drive around the city until we got bored. Most of the time we rode around the rural roads listening to music until we got hungry or tired and went home.
Take a moment and remember your adolescence. It doesn’t matter if you were a kid in the ‘40s, ‘50s, or whenever. It was all the same for us. There was awkward hand holding and doubly awkward kisses at the end of the night. There were the songs that you may not like, but take you to a particular place and time and you smile. What makes me smile is the fact that it was just like this for generations and we all share the same nostalgia. We remember the first dates and the times you were so embarrassed you could just die.
Some years ago, when our daughter was just a wee little girl, we were at the little drive-in in the town I lived in as a young person. We had played miniature golf next door and walked over for some ice cream. We sat at a picnic table and ate our ice cream cones and a battered Camaro roared in and about 10 kids got out like it was a clown car at the circus.
On the car stereo was a song that was popular when I was young. The kids were singing along to it like it was new. My wife and I looked at each other and smiled and then laughed as one of the kids looked at us and our daughter. Little did he know that he would be here at the picnic table with his kids some day looking knowingly at kids in a car and, for a brief few minutes, he would be a teenager again.
I’d like to mention that the drive-in is still there. It’s called the Arctic Circle and is in Churchville, Maryland. They still serve ice cream and it’s still just as popular as it ever was. If you find yourself passing through, swing on in and get a sundae. You’ll be glad you did.
Award-winning columnist Joe Weaver, a native of Baltimore, is a husband, father, pawnbroker and gun collector. From his home in New Bern, he writes on the lighter side of family life.
