Old Man Shaking Fist at Teenagers

On Saturday night I decided to go to bed a little bit early since Elli had kept me up a part of the night before.  Before going to bed though I had to run to the grocery store to get ingredients for pancakes for Sunday morning.  At 10:17 Saturday night I wandered out of my house to go to the store and found the streets quite packed with teenagers.  Flashy clubbing shirts, extremely tiny tops and miniskirts were the order of the day and everyone was giddy with excitement.  My first reaction was

Damn teenagers, get out of my way.  I just want peaceful, quiet streets and here you are all up and about at this late hour.  Go to bed!

Then I thought for a moment.  I recalled what 10:17 would have looked like when I was 18-22 and the idea that I would be off to bed at that point is completely outrageous - unless I had neglected to sleep at all on Friday night.  I would be getting ready for a round of Barbu, an invasion of the castle of the frost giants or a Chaos Sanctuary pallyzon farming session.

Certainly the activities that I would have been involved in on Saturday night would not appeal to most of the young people out there that evening.  They (massive overgeneralization incoming) like getting drunk, dressing up fancy/slutty and going out on the town and aren't so much interested in doubling the world, rolling a 1 to attack and benching the green d20 or just one more rare gothic bow to sell for SOJs.  I never have fit in with the clubbing/bar scene and never will, so it isn't like I am made irritable by people I once would have found compelling.

However, it is interesting how much my perception of time has changed.  When you have a mate, child and responsibilities time is a thing you never have enough of while sex and companionship are not hard to come by.  These things are not true for most of the young people hitting the bars and clubs near my home though as they have more time, less responsibility and going out and meeting someone is a thrill instead of a chore.  I feel like I should get a porch and a rocker and shake my fist at young people as they go by.  Perhaps I could thrill them with stories about how hard my commute to school was or how morals in their generation have gone by the wayside.

I tried to get a picture of a young woman in a fancy/slutty outfit to put nearer the top of the post, but it turns out any Google search I tried had plenty of hits but the pictures weren't precisely what I was looking for....