Writers from Alice Munro to JD Salinger capture the restless ennui and dangerous passions of the do-nothing years before adulthood sets in
Returning to carefree adolescence might sound like an exciting and sexy proposition – parties, kissing, no hangovers, no debt – but wasn’t most of that time spent in utter boredom? Wasn’t being a teenager tedious with brief, if intense, highs? The rules, the expectations, the parents, the fact you’re not a child and not yet an adult, the constant sensation that you are always missing out on something.
As I recall, those pimply years comprised extended periods of school and do-nothing days with the occasional freezing night spent watching older lads talk to girls. But I’d argue it was within that tiresome fug that the lasting stuff occurred, and many of our treasured teenage memories resulted from nothing particularly exciting happening: bored, you did something mad with your mates. Or you did something mad to yourself. Or you sent something mad to somebody else in a hope they might feel the same. Or you let a horse into a house party.