Your Inner Teenager

Sometimes people talk about getting in touch with their "inner child". The rest of us scorn those people, and for good reason.

But even those fruit loops never talk about getting in touch with your inner teenager. I never really thought about it before, but you have to wonder why not. Is it because, as adults, some of us still act or think like we did at that age? Are so many of us still alternately naive and too knowing, arrogant and extremely insecure, selfish and generous? Maybe.

And its true that many people do want to return to what they imagined their teenage years to be. But those people are delusional.

The rest of us, upon reflection, remember thinking things were cool when they so obviously aren't, and weren't. Of doing things that were not just incredibly stupid, but unfulfilling and unrewarding even at the time. Of liking things that, upon coming back to them in our adult years, are not anywhere near as likable as we remember. It's something I call the "False Nostalgia Effect", as opposed to the regular "Nostalgia Effect".

I think we are all familiar with both these conditions: the latter is where we continue to fondly remember things that are basically good, but for which there's no reason other than nostalgia to like them now as much as we do. Whereas the former is when we look forward to revisiting something we were fond of, only to experience it again and wonder what the hell we were thinking.

Many things I go back to years later obviously fit in one category or the other. I find new good in a thing I didn't see before, and while I may not enjoy it in the same way, I enjoy it just as much. Or I clearly see through the false veneer of whatever attracted me to a thing in the first place, and cast it off, perhaps dejectedly, as something no longer to be admired or enjoyed. This can't be done without leaving at least a little hole in the heart, but the sheer obnoxious wrongness of the thing helps you to cope.

Sometimes though, things fall into a weird middle category. There's at least a glimmer left of what attracted you in the first place, but your "good taste" vision has become sharper over the years, and the rough edges of the thing have come into sharp focus. No longer can the thing be simply enjoyed, even in private. Something inside won't let you make the convenient excuses people typically make at this point: "just lighten up," or "it's a part of your childhood", or "stop being so serious and just enjoy it". It's almost bad enough that you want to wash your hands of the thing completely.

But it's not that easy. Somehow, despite all the embarrassment the mere memory of liking this thing has caused you, total repudiation is out of reach. It's not quite bad enough, not quite wrong enough, to toss out that small part of you that was still innocent in your teenage years. The part of you left over from that vaunted childhood outlook, trying hard not to die out completely in the brutal world of the American teenager. The part of you that could like a thing for itself, regardless of its objective qualities.

As an adult that part of you, if it survived, is still valuable. Maybe even more than it used to be. You realize that anything attached to it strongly enough will always live in your heart, no matter how cringe-inducing, no matter how lackluster, or how truly awful. You accept that you are forever chained to bad taste, because you used to be a long time ago, and at least a small part of you is still the same. And you will always be stuck with it, and everything attached to it.

Damn you, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. Damn you.