Many, many moons ago, when the Eighties was still a very vivid memory and carpet jackets had just burst onto the scene, a curtain-topped and chisel jawed Disgrace was handed a piece of paper that he had spent the previous 13 years fearing. The Leaving Certificate. After the customary whooping and yahooing, my classmates and I all retired to the local lakes where the weak and the red-headed were dispatched with wet abandon. Flour bombs garnished with rotten eggs, were lashed at passing cars with much hilarity. Our artistic talents were hilariously exposed as we gave our teachers cars new paint jobs. There was also streaking, mooning, and indecent exposure in the very corridors of academia that we once slowly trudged.
Eventually, after one of the guys lost his front teeth, we took a break from the carnage and most of us went home to change. I was still wet and covered in flour (I was never the most popular in school) and I remember vividly pulling off my uniform with a fleeting sadness. My shirt had been autographed by all my friends and I was really going to miss both of them. Anyway, after explaining to my folks that "F's" were actually good, I was back down at the school armed with two 2 litre's of 'White Lightning' cider. I'm sure you know the drill from here, I drank the two of them, I vomited them back up. Then there was the noisy bus journey into town, where rivers of urine flowed from lane ways. Coats, heavy with Naggins, hung in cloakrooms all around the city. There was more vomit. Then some mooching, some vomiting, some mooching and some bouncers. The night was like a carousel of chaos, and when we returned home (minus our coats) we left a trail of destruction behind us that would of had the Danish apologising.
This morning then, I was battle ready. I emerged from Disgrace Manor with trepidation. Surely, I thought, the city will be in meltdown. Cars, will be littered around the streets, like litter, only car shaped. And on fire. I expected casualties. Bodies of 17 year olds, all stacked up like Surrey cattle. I anticipated rivers of vomit, crashing through Rathmines. I even wore less exclusive aftershave in a probably vain attempt to ward off amorous females. But I need not of worried. For instead of a post-leaving-apocalypse, I was greeted with the usual hustle and bustle of Dublin town. No screaming fire engines. No speeding squad cars. Not even a single pavement pizza to negotiate.
It appears that Irish teenagers have gone soft. I suppose I'll have to blame Bertie on this one too.
1 comment:
I can never understand why people are always giving out about them, our antics would put them to shame.
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