Melange Magazine

Editorial | Of Adolescence & Adulthood

Emily Ding

Dear readers,
Somehow, I managed to fall off the bandwagon of the Mexican wave of adolescent love experience just before it took off with the rest of my cohorts and left me spitting dust.
Back in the early days of high school, I remember how the corridor outside our classroom was always populated by young adolescent couples necking and kissing up to each other, the boys' hands invariably roving to some forbidden place until the girls slapped them away - but I remember, too, that some of them didn't and were quite enjoying themselves making some of us squirm. It made me very uncomfortable to have to walk past these young couples whom I believe really believed themselves to be in love - some of them friends of mine - and I'd just try to walk away as quickly as possible.
And I remember countless times when we were sitting in groups and chatting in class that people would always ask each other who we were crushing on and such, and whenever the question turned to me, I would always answer in the negative, and no one believed me. Really, no one believed me at all. But honestly, you can ask anyone - even my closest friends, and they won't be able to tell you if there was a boy I actually liked in high school. So it's not just a matter of posturing or being secretive. There really wasn't anybody. Oh, sure there were times when I'd think a guy was pretty special or good-looking but it never really went past that and it never really reached 'crush' status either.
So. How old am I now? Nineteen in September, and still, never been kissed. Remember Drew Barrymore? That film is the classic example of everything coming to those who wait. So, wait, and you get Michael Vartan; rush, and you get... uhh, Justin Timberlake.
Still, I know you are not convinced. I can just hear the mournful sounds of pity now. "Awwww, you poor thing..."
But you misunderstand. It is nothing to mourn. Contrary to popular belief, it is actually quite normal. Adolescence isn't necessarily incomplete without puppy love - or maybe that's just coming from where I stand. My mom remarked recently when she came to Melbourne for a visit how odd it was that none of my close girlfriends had boyfriends. "How come you guys are so... sensible?" she asked, like it was a four-letter word; she was clearly perplexed. And I'd just rolled my shoulders, insouciant. I didn't have an answer. "When it happens, it'll happen," I told her. But she's made me wonder. Maybe living at an all girls boarding school together has made us so used to each other's company. And I'm sure on my part it has also to do with the fact that I'm not really the kind of girl who tells everybody who she likes. I never gush - unless it's over Jude Law, of course. I'm a little... picky, some would say. But I think it's simply a matter of finding a person you connect with, like a close friend. If close friends aren't easy to come by, what makes you think boyfriends are?
My mother also recently asked me, rather covertly, if I had gotten myself a guy, and I was like, "No. Why?" Apparently, she'd taken a look at my phone bill, discovered that I'd spent thirty minutes on the phone talking to someone at my own initiative (I don't like talking for very long on the phone), and wondered if it was a boy. When I told her it was actually one of my girlfriends who had left our cohort in Melbourne for Sydney and I had just called her up to catch up with things, she actually seemed rather disappointed. I think she had wanted some juicy gossip out of me to share with her circle of friends, all of whom I am sure would like nothing better than to sit around talking about their sons' and daughters' love lives. Imagine that.
And I remember how in high school I was always the one listening to my friends' romantic maladies, and offering general common-sense advice that was largely self-explanatory since I didn't have any specific experiences to speak of. It was rather cute, now that I look back on it. We think we're so mature when we reach our early teenage years but we really aren't, and it just takes hindsight to make you realize it.
I really don't regret the non-existence of adolescence love in my life, although I must admit it would have given me some good stories to tell in retrospect.
Like this one my aunt told me about one of my cousins, about how he'd gotten involved with this girl and how after a few months he had decided to break it off but she hadn't been willing to let him go. She'd been tenacious (which would have been admirable had it been applied to something more fruitful and respectable), and she'd kept coming up to my aunt's house to 'suck up' to my poor aunt, bringing her fruit baskets and what-not. My cousin grew so tired of it he pretended no one was home once when she came calling, but this didn't stop her. Oh, no. Guess what my cousin's ex did? She climbed the gate! She scaled the 10-foot gate to come and find him. Scary stuff, I know. I think that probably scarred my poor cousin for life and made him much more cautious about the kind of girls he got involved with. It's quite hilarious, really, when it's not happening to you.
So, yes, no regrets. And I am on my way to adulthood! Let's just hope I don't fall off the bandwagon this time, too. I shudder to think of what I would be left with then... old age?
**p.s.** This is meant to be somewhat self-effacing. Don't take it too seriously. :)
Yours,
Emily Krystin Low

Dear Readers,
Despite teetering precariously on the cusp of adulthood, I have yet to obtain any form of valid identification that I can proudly flash at bouncers, menacing or otherwise, who refuse to believe I can be legally served alcohol. Sadly, I also still find myself foolishly falling head-first in and out of half a dozen crushes, sometimes simultaneously, with a rapidity that is altogether ridiculous.
Recently, my grandmother, who is visiting from overseas, sat me down at the kitchen table and proceeded to have an earnest talk, not with me, but to me, at me, regarding Marriage. Gosh Grandma, I wanted to say, alarmed. I'm only 18 years young, and I'm not even sure if I'm doing the 'right' degree that will lead me to the 'right' career, let alone be sure that my boyfriend is 'Mr. Right' for me. The dear old lady exhorted me to 'Keep hold of this one, he's a good catch,' or words to that effect, I can't be exactly sure, since my spoken Hokkien, the dialect in which we communicate, is so garbled it's virtually unintelligble, even to me.
My mother, being, of course, a mother, treats my so-called 'steady relationship' (an oxymoron if I ever heard one) with a greater degree of circumspection. For as long as I can remember, she's told me to be more mature, to act my age. These days she repeatedly warns me that I must build my character, which to me has always appeared a somewhat vague piece of advice. 'You don't even know what you want,' she scoffs, but not wholly unkindly.
Wisdom is reportedly Age's companion, and I find myself travelling along with them on the slow road in the general direction of Adulthood, listening to their careless banter. Age convinces me Wisdom is right in saying I should heed my long-suffering mother's words! Thus immediately after savouring, with sweet abandon, a mammoth slice of my favourite cheesecake, I pondered whether the years advancing makes one more or less 'picky.' Spoilt for choice, I personally more oft than not revert to predictability.
So as time tumbles on, does one become less adverse to trying new things and seek to expand the sphere of the world known to you, or do you walk with your hands in your pockets, clinging firmly onto what is familiar and smells comfortingly of home? With respect to love, which I note somewhat amusedly, is a four letter word too, I think it is precisely this period that is instrumental in untangling our notions of adolescent or 'puppy love' from evolving, deeper, more holistic understandings and expectations. I guess adolescent love is usually associated, infamously, with its sheer physicality, as in, ah, the perils of young love. I always dissolve into fits of hysterics recalling the traumatised manner in which one of my friends described how she and her boyfriend were caught making out in the fire escape by the shopping mall security guard. Come to think of it, they did have a habit of disappearing once everyone else came out of the movies... When I was 13 even I sunk to the depths of Sweet-Valley-style Americanisation by playing spin the bottle. It was only once, honest!
But now I've begun to fashion, perhaps tenderly, perhaps nostalgically, perhaps loftily, perhaps bitterly, a definition of love that is uniquely my own; we pick what switches and swathes of characteristics we desire the significant other we have yet to meet to come gallantly clothed in. At the same time we discard pins and needles that previously sheathed nakedness, learning that, yes, the cloths can be draped another way from what we initially planned.
Amidst the struggle of striking the balance, knowing when to cut through the brush, and when to obediently follow the safe path, I ask myself and others the fundamental question of what we believe in. In a conversation with a friend I hadn't kept in touch with I found myself marvelling at how much he's changed. We both agreed our lives aren't without regrets; each choice made inevitably leaves another alternative unexplored. So in a broader sense, as adulthood looms, we truly do build our characters by the decisions we make, and it's the people I know that have lent a helping hand in mixing the cement.
On my current journey I'm drunk with a new found sense of independence and in pursuit of liberty, immersing myself in old interests and discovering new ones, formulating my world views, identifying my core values, determining which political agenda I shall foster a healthy disregard for. (Invariably, most students are left-wingers until they start making money, wherein they are overcome by the desire to protect their nest-egg and are sucked into the right-wing abyss. As you can see, I am still a penniless student.)
So adulthood, here I come! I guess the next thing to do is finally get my driver's license.
Yours truly,
Krystin