Teenage Wasteland

So Aaron and I drove and hour to stake conference this weekend and ended up arriving a little late. This left us sitting in the overflow. Since our stake conference is held in a high school auditorium we got to hang out in the school cafeteria along with a few shrieking toddlers, their parents AND a pack of unsupervised adolescents.

Watching people about ten years younger than me tends to be exceedingly painful AND incredibly entertaining. There was a pair of young lovebirds, they both looked a very young sixteen. The guy had oversized glasses and acne and the girl was in the throes of growing pains. They had their folding chairs pressed much closer than a Book of Mormon's width apart. They spent the WHOLE conference holding hands and blissfully staring straight into each other's eyes. Nothing could break their adoring trance, not screaming babies, not the intermediate hymn, not the disapproving glances from all around them. They were SOLID. They looked like they were having so much fun Aaron and I decided to try it out to see how long we could rapturously stare into one another's eyes. I think we got about twenty seconds. We just aren't what we used to be.

The experience left me thinking about the many things I left behind in my adolescence. A beloved green army jacket, a generous helping of angst, a couple lousy boyfriends, a string of TERRIBLE school portraits, about two feet of hair, and a lot of humiliation. I guess growing up is a good thing.