This is a topic to chill the heart of every teenager. Adolescence was our refuge, our excuse for not getting a job, and for being narky in the mornings. "Don't pummel him," our collective mothers cried. "He's only young, and sure, weren't you the same at his age?" Grumbling, our fathers would have to admit that, yes they too were a right pain in the posterior. But in truth, it's all a lie; a smoke screen designed to explain our failings, because after about fourteen every teenager is mature enough to act adult-like, they just don't want to. You see, the pubescent years are terrible; your body alters, your voice croaks and the opposite sex, previously fellow human beings, become strange alien creatures whose ways are understood only by the wise. We feel hard done by, and as such, we extract a terrible revenge on the world, one of drinking, mood swings and general behaviour against the world at large. This revenge is great. After about three spotty and growing up pain filled years we get to act in a completely obscene manner and all that's said is "Young people today, what's the matter with them?" Can you remember the freedom of revelling in your still youthful, but infinitely stronger body, that those hellish years produced. It's intoxicating to see things with an adults clarity but with a child's awe. Kavanagh said "the newness that was in every stale thing" , that's what it's like. Old scenery that I passed every day on my way to school transforms from mere background to dream invoking pictures. The stars, previously, just lights, become great friezes dotted across the sky by some celestial deity. Find even though we see all this with an adults eye, we're afraid of the adult world, one of family, commitment and jobs. So what can we do but hide behind this notion of the "teenager", not adult, not child, a combination of both and because adults and children vary so much anything a teenager does can be pretty much excused as they're going through a "phase". What a load of poppycock! I've gone through more "phases" than the moon, and to be honest what they've really been for the most part is a childish rage at not getting my own way, and perhaps the occasional heart break. But the whole post-pubescent and pre-adult life is a wonderful roller coaster ride, with very little cares and even less discretion. Think about it. We don't have to worry about lodging, food, clothing, heat, electricity etc. The list goes on. Lots of us get pocket money and those of us who don't can more often than not, with pleading puppy like expression, melt the parents' hearts long enough to grab a fiver and run for it. Then comes the day we've been dreading, the day we fill our C.A.O/C.A.S forms. That's it, that's the day we decide our career and choose our calling life. That's the day when no-one believes the childish acting anymore because no child could comprehend the life altering decisions we have to make. For a lot it's too soon, they're not ready to make the choice. They let daddy or mammy tell them that's "engineering". That's a great job. Guaranteed work there. For some, the one's who'd like to keep the charade for as long as possible, they choose "arts", saying "yeah I'll get a degree in history in Anglo - Saxon, pre - history and plate tectonics, then I'll go back and do what I really want". For a very few, we know what we want and we aim for a degree that will lead us into a job that we enjoy. And for a handful every year the pressure of deciding your destiny at as young as sixteen - it's too much and we find them swinging from a tree. Leaving adolescence behind is not easy. The adult world is so prejudiced against us, we're too young in their eyes for any job that doesn't involve the words "would you like fries with that?" We wouldn't understand the complex tasks of telling people to make fries until we're at least twenty-five. This sort of attitude is one of the reasons we're scared of leaving our teenage years. Oh, we can get a job all right, but we will have to wait years to get anywhere that even remotely lets us have a decent wage. This might sound a little selfish to the average forty-year-old, "Who does he think he is, expecting to walk into a high paid job off the street?" I hear you cry, I don't. What I'm saying is that I'll be one and a half times older by the time I get to somewhere where there's even an ounce of security. The changes from primary to secondary school, from junior to leaving cert., from school to college, have conditioned us to think in fast terms and the thought that a third of our life span will have been spent before we have enough money in the bank to relax is terrifying to someone whose life has just undergone several altering events in the space of six years. The farewell to adolescence is a painful one, and some of us don't make it. But those who do emerge more or less intact, a little sadder, a little wise and still scared as hell of the strange new world before us.