Early Adolescence

I sometimes think about the good and bad times during my earlier years. It's funny but there are always parts of my life that I'd say were good years and others I'd say were not great years, although what I've noticed is that even during times of crisis, there was some kind of learning that accompanied it, as though I were preparing for some time in the future when my life got better.

My early adolescence wasn't easy. I had been an academic high achiever in primary 4 and 5, and I went downhill in primary 6, then struggled to keep up in early secondary. Those were depressing years. I didn't want to go back and face some of the people I knew from earlier. I gave up my membership to the academic clubs, didn't want to represent my school in mathematics or whatever. Maybe I gave up too easily, maybe what happened to me earlier came about without too much effort, and now I had to stump in the effort to get it back.

Those were depressing years that I couldn't find very much to redeem. The next years more than made up for it, but sometimes I wonder if I could have just been moderately happy for all my four years in secondary school.

I was a very musical person and a lot of music went through my life. Coincidently or not, those were the first years that I paid attention to music and the pop charts. IT was also one of the first years when SoundScan changed the music industry, and the music charts actually reflected what was being sold by the stores. Suddenly a lot of left field people went up the charts: there was PM Dawn, there was NWA.

It was also my first few years in scouts, and I went through one or two tough training camps. That was the beginning of my getting tough about having a fitness regime, and for whatever reason getting ready for national service. The irony was that I probably only did 1 year of combat service – though it was tough enough. The more further reaching impact of that was being able to keep myself fit for a longer time, and getting to the point where I could actually think about running a marathon.

There was a Mt Pinatubo related haze. That year was really hazy. I remember the ash being everywhere, the sky was always kinda white, and for some strange reason it totally reflected in the nebulous state of mind that I had during that time.

So when you did consider what I managed to achieve during those 2-3 years, it was pretty strange that I would consider them the worst years of my life, but it certainly felt that way all the time. Self esteem was low, I became less outgoing. I went from being more extroverted to being more introverted, I was no longer a star pupil, and I think about all the friendships that I could have cultivated during those years but I didn't.

Sometimes I think about all the music that I played to myself during those years. Those were the years when I spent loathing all the music that was on the radio. That was before the alternative music boom. I had to listen to hair metal. Warrant, Poison, Alias, Firehouse, Winger, Skid Row. On and on and on, I got tired of it. Then there were the sentimental tunes – my god those were the worst. Bryan Adams being on top of the pops for an inordinate amount of time with “Everything I do”. Escape Club with dunnowhat “I'll Be There”. It was a dreadful, dreadful time for me, musically. And that is what made what came after that so sweet for me.

And that was also the time when I earned my Grade 8 and that gave me the perfect excuse to quit playing piano, even though for whatever reason I stayed on for another year to retake it (and fail). But it was the perfect transition: I would start to learn music through listening and reacting emotionally to albums, instead of drill drill drill myself on the piano. It was at least as good as playing the piano, to be honest.

Of course, a lot of things are supposed to happen in early adolescence. It's the point where your childhood ends, and you're supposed to learn some independence, you're supposed to learn some thing about real life.

There's no real nice way to say this, but one of the biggest problems in my life during this point was my parents. They didn't react well to my lowered status from being a star to being average. At the first sign of trouble, they started giving me hell, and it was very difficult for them to come to terms with how they actually made the problem worse, making me spiral into depression and not wanting to keep on studying. And even then, when I look back on those traumatic days, I wonder at how bone headed they were. Actually admittedly, I was boneheaded in a way: I managed to convince myself that I was in a downward spiral and maybe I acted accordingly. Maybe if I had given it a shot, things would have been better.

I've wised up and grown up from those terrible days, but some of those effects had never left me. I never regained my place at the top of the academic pyramid, but that's OK, I still managed to study at Snowy Hill. The negative impact on my social life was more serious. Sometimes I wonder what I'd have turned out like if I hadn't had that nasty introduction to teenage life that I did, but at least things got back to normal.

But these days I look back at those years, and when I think about how those years of adversity forced me to dig in and try to grow up a bit more, I'm inclined to think about those times more fondly.

Maybe what I missed most about my teenage years was finding that almost every year I did something different, something better, experienced or did something for the first time. And when are you going to have those new experiences after you turn 40?