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Back when I got my first AOL account, approximately once every 2 weeks I would receive the exact same chain letter, mostly consisting of a sappy quasi-religious poem by a teenage girl mooning over her imaginary boyfriend along with a few dire warnings such as "IF U SEND THIS 2 30 PEEPUL OR MORE, UR CRUSH WILL KISS U!!" Oh, and there were also some rather reproachful warnings about people getting hit by trucks, struck by lightning and spilling hot coffee on their crotches because they failed to continue an Internet chain letter which somehow had managed to be in existence since 1850. What really makes me want to go off and kick helpless woodland creatures is the fact that those moony teen poems are by no means limited to inane chain letters. Every other "teen page" I seem to stumble across appears to consist of some girl wailing pathetically and narcissistically over a) her lack of a boyfriend or b) the fact that her last one realized what the hell he was getting himself into and broke up with her. I mean, sure, I'm all for experimenting with relationships if you know what you're getting yourself into, but give me a damn break. Are their little squeaky, mall-mobbing, hive-minded lives really incomplete without a boyfriend to validate their existence and worth as a human being? I suppose I should be blaming society for the message it imparts to these girls-- that they're nothing without a man, that their life won't "really" begin until they have the affection of a male significant other, that they need male validation for their lives to be worth anything. But at the same time, I want to kick them for their inability to exhibit any tendancies towards independent thought. They mope on about how they sobbed for hours and hours after their boyfriends dumped them, how much terrible, wretched pain they were in and what an awful cold place the world is, and two weeks later, of course, they'll be clinging remoralike to some other boy whom they'll be done with in the course of a month's time anyway. And sob and bawl over it and write angsty poetry. And go find another boy to validate their sorry, thought-free existences. And repeat again. Ad nauseum. And you know what? Sure, it hurts when you think you really really love someone and then they leave you standing out in the cold. But you know what? That's not real love; that's infatuation. Infatuation is quick, intense, and exploitative; love is more subtle. And you know what else? Regardless of what your moony poetry might imply, your pain at being dumped is not the worst pain ever suffered by any human being in the history of the universe. Learn to put things in perspective. You'll be over it by the time a new crush comes along, anyway. Find some other way to take up your free time aside from writing crappy poetry-- perhaps by putting yourself in a situation where you can help people with real problems, and maybe in so doing take a step out of your sheltered existence. (Yes, I've noticed it's usually well-off suburbanites who tend to immerse themselves in the Teen Angst crap, probably because their life has nothing else in the way of drama.) And for the love of God, please, even if you decide in the end that every breakup merits a rambling angsty poem from you, learn to write poetry. Please. It's the least you can do for yourself. |