“Tonight's the night I've waited for. Because you're not a baby anymore” Neil Sedaka from his lyrics to Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen.
How many times do I have to say it? I signed up for a baby, not a kid. Stupid I know, but I bet I’m not alone. When that biological clock starts (and in my case it was a real clock... I went from no interest in the next generation to tinnitus of ticking overnight!) with the tick-tocking all your dilated pupils can see in a babe in swaddling clothes. Yeah you vaguely think ahead to first teeth, first steps and even first days at school... but hulking teenager braying for a cribs style sweet sixteen party?... ah nope. No... when you hormonally paint the nursery and hang cot mobiles the only crib you are thinking about is the one that junior will lie in when you both come back from the labour ward.
As an adult we are all familiar with the concept of time flying. One minute we are being told off for eating the contents of the sandpit or biting other playground occupants and the next we’re in detention for chewing gum and having a fight behind the bicycle sheds. Blink an eye and we’re in the doghouse at work for stinking out the office when we reheated last night curry and having heated words with the office bully. Same old same old but we overnight seem to be bigger, and yet we still feel the same as we ever did.
I don’t know why we never remember that time flies for us all. As a parent you just somehow are permanently surprised at how your little baby has hurtled through life at full pelt and landed you (in my case) as being faced with the prospect of a full on Sherwhete Sixteen do in your house. My baby is no baby anymore. And yet it I swear it was only yesterday that I told his five year old self – no more house parties... just outings for birthdays till he is 16. Apparently that was 11 long years ago.
Still a deal is a deal... a house party it is.
(Actually that makes me sound much more reasonable than I am ... I did try to bamboozle him with the prospect of a hummer limo taking him and 7 mates to a festival and bringing them back after... but he saw through that one!)
He held me to the deal I struck with his five year old self and my house WILL be converted into teenage paradise in less than 4 weeks.
What I’ve found most alarming is how such a non-event birthday, has been somehow transformed into a right of passage milestone while my back was turned.
Back in the time before MTV, being 16 in Britain meant just one thing to most of my peers. Cider. At 16, Britain’s draconian licensing laws finally relented a little and allowed a nominal child to purchase just one alcoholic beverage... fermented apple or pear juice. Of course things could be worse... we could have been born in America where one can marry, buy a house, shoot half a town with legally bourn arms and still have 5 years to go before you could legally celebrate any of the above with a bit of booze. But by European standards, we Brits are hard done by when it comes to access to alcohol... so 16 was only sweet in the fact we could legally purchase 2.5 litres of 9% vol apple grog and get blotto.
I do believe my 16th birthday involved the members of my local youth centre (which included on George O’Dowd, now known to the world as Boy George) getting blotto in Woolwich Town Centre and me being sick as a dog on the 161 bus home. We were vaguely aware that our cousins over the pond made a big deal of 16, but it really was nothing special to us beyond being the occasion that heralded our first legal hangovers.
However, thanks to MTV, and their ghastly “My Super Sweet Sixteen” series... in which episode after episode parents sell internal organs to fund extravaganzas to celebrate their off spring reaching this milestone - just for said fruit of the loins to throw an epic strop that they wanted a pony as in horse NOT a watch from the designer store in Beverley Hills of the same name... expectations for this milestone have risen. It is not unusual for limo’s chefs, fireworks and even helicopters to be a part of an average British child’s 16th birthday party.
I knew we were on a slippery slope the moment coca-cola replaced dandelion and burdock as our favourite fizzy drink!
Damn them crazy yanks and their merry mental ideas. Its fine for them... they need a distraction that the privileges of being an adult are held back till 21. But for us hey ho... cider at 16 may not seem much ... but every privilege and curse of adulthood is coming for ya in 24 months. Why the need to go crazy about being 16?
What is 16 any way?
It’s just a year older than 15 and a year younger than 17. It’s the year before the penultimate year of childhood and for many is just a dress rehearsal for being a proper grown up. Of course sex becomes legal at 16, but face facts... sex at 16 is a tragic imbalance between genuine desire and practical lack of realistic opportunity! There is also more fumbling than pleasure at that age... hence the focus on the realistic availability and results of cider! It’s an inbetweeny stage, where one finds themselves feeling not like a child but finding ultimately that you are still one! What on earth is there to make a big deal over?
But hey... these days no one knows what dandelion and burdock is... we are all slaves to coca-cola and in keeping with all things Yankee Doodle we must slavishly follow their cultural norms as if they were our own.
And so this morning, defeated by any attempt to suggest something a little more in keeping with our culture (wellies on Clapham Common and a bit of brit pop being thoroughly rejected)... my son and I sat down to plan the Sherwhete Sixteen do that IS going to happen whether I like it or not. And let’s face facts I find it nigh on impossible to happy unless he is... so I like it (I guess).
But I can tell you who will not like it.
Wilfred Samboogha.
Wilfred Samboogha is the manager of my local bank. He lets us call him Wilf as he believes this makes banking much more friendly. (It doesn’t Wilf... When you write to me I still cack my pants and I hate being asked to come in and ‘have a chat ‘with you.) Wilf is gonna be inviting me in very soon cause I don’t see Wilf as the sort of chap who will embrace the idea of parties for children that cost not only more than the average wedding but more than the cost of the average divorce!
I am trying to cut and trim the mounting budget as I go...10 hours of hot tunes down loaded by my Club DJ mates saved on a mobile disco, 72 silver and gold comets that explode into coloured starbursts did cost a pretty penny but the nice man on the shop took pity on me and gave me 60 coloured mines and bursts of wriggling fish free! The nice bouncy castle man said I can have inflatable sumos chucked into the deal and I’m buttering up some ancient rellies for catering! But the fact remains, that my son’s sherweet sixteen shopping list has much more on it than what was on mine all those years ago. (Dry ice machine on the cheap anybody?)
Wilfred is gonna go mental! (And rightly so as I deeply suspect that it may well be at some stage the funds to cover this extravaganza may his branches money rather than mine). Promise you WILL get it all back Wilf!
Time may well have flown by... my wee little baby is now a towering six footer who wants to dance the night away with his pals and celebrate reaching the age of consent.We will light the sky with fireworks when it is all over and oooh and ahhh like it's the 4th of July in Disneyworld! I know he will have a fabulous night to remember and that makes me very happy indeed.
But and i know it is not responsible so please don’t blame me... there is just a teeny tiny part of me that remains nostaligic for the days when it was culturally acceptable to celebrate 16 with a three quid purchase of 2.5 litres of 9% proof apple grog and have a messy bus ride home!
The JaxWorld Blog can be followed on Twitter-http://twitter.com/#!/JaxWorldBlog
If you enjoyed this blog and you want to contact Jax or find out more about the JaxWorld blog, pls log onto :http://thejaxworldblog.vpweb.co.uk/
Thanks for continuing to vote for JaxWorld as the Best Blog about Stuff and for ALL your support that has made this blog such a huge success.
No comments:
Post a Comment