Life in the Lentil Lane.

There are many good things about getting older - there are also way too many horrible things but we all either know about those or instinctively don't need to hear them.  One good thing though is you seriously begin not to care about what other people think of you.  This is totally liberating and a fantastic bonus which goes some way to make up for the horrors of mortality and aging which are far too boring and hideous for words.

I have to admit to sometimes feeling a little "out there" in terms of fitting in with other folk.  However, I love the fact that their snidey comments and tsk tskings cannot hardly even be perceived by me now let alone anguished about.  Where is your sting now Teenage Angst!????

For, gentle reader, I have had my (more than!) fair share of tsk tsk ings throughout my (seems so long) life and I can report that I am now, relatively free, of the guilt and confusion that other people's opinions about me used to induce.  The fact that I now have two children of teenage and one who is out the other side is interesting.  The two younger ones interact with us only through horror struck poses and "disbelieving stares".  The slightest movement from either myself or their father can invoke a torrent of awe-striking proportions from them.  They hate and are disgusted by everything about us.  The way we look, talk, eat, think, sleep, even.  I overheard them yesterday, ranting about the way their father sleeps!  They can work themselves up into a life-threatening seizure over the way that I cook sponge cakes for example.

"She (!)  doesn't even MEASURE the ingredients!  Look! LOOK!!! LOOK AT THAT!!! Omg!!! SICKening!   She is using her hands to measure the FLOUR!!!! OH my GOD!   I am not eating THAT!

I am NEVER inviting any of my friends here (good! - Ed)  I would be SOOOO EMBARASSED!!! (even better - Ed.)  There's NOTHING to do here!  There's not even a TRAMPOLINE!!!!!

They have this thing they do, miming an asthma attack !!!!  MIMING an inhaler !!!  They have abbreviated the mime so it is barely detectable to the casual observer.  On the outside, on the School Bus, for example, they may be outwardly completely calm, sitting there with their obligatory headphones on and staring blankly out of the window.  On the inside, however, they are SEETHING with rage and being totally SICKENED by the antics of their fellow passengers.

How do I know all this?  Because, on the "Family Fun Day - Sunday afternoon Dog Walk, ie, when I literally force them to take off the Headphones and step away from the x-box or whatever it is that invades our living POD! - they walk behind me in a simmering sulk for a while and then start to talk to each other - getting more and more animated as they do - about what they would do to all the people that sicken them.  Some times they would apparently 'merely' get a starving rat, place it on the offender's bare stomach and put a jar over it and then heat the jar to unbearable levels until the rat has to chew its way out through the stomach... that would be the punishment for someone who had, for example, had the absolute gall to speak to them on the bus.  I wonder what I have raised? but it is a momentary thought, since I am now so used to the outrage that it barely registers.

The son who is "out the other side" is gentle and caring and totally compassionate.  At least, he appears to be, for all I know, inside he too is seething with rage about people around him.  Perhaps we all are!

I dont know, I can only try.
Perhaps I am raising monsters.  Perhaps not.  Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps..... I will keep myself posted.