This relatively new phenomenon is now viewed as a rite of passage, a step in natural development. To parents, it is a nightmare, a second childhood for the immature at heart.
There is a sub-breed that is not oft mentioned, too frightening and weird for a person not of the Krell capacity to imagine. I was such a species, a teenager whose goal was not to be excessively weighty....
It was to be eighty.
If there was any morbidity it was that my tombstone might read-born nineteen oh eight. Boy she was swell, keen, moidergate.
I never wished to dye my locks black, only to wear a multitude of hats. I'd enjoy an instant sanka over a brewsky, and did not treat grammar loosely. To Sinatra and Garland about my room I would twirl, I desperately wished my hair would pin curl.
This was my rebellion, but it lead to a different form of alienation. Not from my parents, but from my peers. The difference is that this was not a phase. There is no cure because I have never viewed it as a sickness.
I never wanted to be different. I do not wear individuality like a pin on my sleeve, a thing to parade for the sake of show, because I know that I wear pieces of past conformity.
And Rhett Butler taught me not to give a damn.
I now view that alien-ness, that sense of utter alienation, as a true blessing, because I have always been able to think for myself. I have never wished, if I only had my own brain, my own heart, my own thoughts that are not wrapped up in how to wear my hair just so or what celebrity I should plaster on my wall. I escaped the herd, and thus I escaped the slaughter.
Don't dare to be different. Dare to be yourself.
And I'm not puffing on my slightly overwrought and cliched cigar.
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