So I was sitting on a train today on my way into the city. It’s not a working day; it’s a Saturday and I’m with my 9 year old daughter, going into the city to buy a birthday present for her friend for the sleepover birthday party she’s going to tonight. We get on at one station and at the next station 2 teenage girls get on. They’re fidgety, standing rather than sitting, ricocheting from one side of the train to the other, getting ready to get out at this station but staying on the train. I wonder if they know where they’re supposed to get off. We get to the next station and one pings out the door like she’s been shot out with a sling shot. Two more teenage girls get on and the one left on the train explains: “Annie got on the train without a ticket.” They all fixate on a spot outside the door. We all fixate on the door. Annie springs back on the train just as the doors are closing and they spend the next few minutes giggling.
My 9 year old daughter rolls her eyes and sighs, “Teenagers!”
While I’m dissolving into laughter and wondering how a 9 year old has any insight into teenage mentality, she explains. “Those girls are acting as if there is no one else on the train.”
And I marvel at how 9 years seem to have disappeared into thin air, barely the blink of an eye, and my previously completely self-absorbed child is now able to see that in others and reject it.
And for the first time in her life I have hope for her teenage years.
SIMMHY MUMMY 