My thoughts in 389 words:
Ever
since mankind people identify adolescence as the most stupid and “out of mind”
phase of life, maybe we’ve been having this thought but never understood what was
triggering that behavior. Nevertheless, even tough no human is certain about
its origin, many psychologists coincide in a theory referring to adulthood
phobia.
This
syndrome is more common than you might think it was, practically everyone has
passed trough its consequences. The difference between each one of us relies in
the way we handle its symptoms: I bet you have had thoughts about watching
youngling’s TV shows, playing with your old dolls or even remembering all those
great moments in the backyard playing with absolutely nothing but your mind. I
personally feel this way very often, and I call it nostalgia, a pretty funny
way of disguising this adulthood phobia.
Well,
actually Mr. J.D. Salinger wrote about it in a very controversial way: he
depicted Holden Caulfield, the main character of Catcher in the Rye, as a
teenager searching for belonging and acting stupidly just to test his tastes.
Many critics have debated about this posture, however I find it pretty
straightforward: Holden is having adulthood phobia.
Several
chapters of this great novel describe his actions and let the reader think for
a second how important being “childish” can be in order to psychologically grow
as a person, a memorable example comes to my mind whenever a 15 year old presumes
he’s old enough to engage a sexual relationship… “I was walking around the room
waiting for the prostitute to show up…” (Salinger 92) and whenever the
situation shows up, reactions are generally “Look, I don’t feel very much like
myself tonight”. This past example clearly demonstrates how a typical
adolescence statements turns out just to be a fallacy whenever it comes to
working it out.
This
previous example is just one of many situations happening in real life were a
teenager is looking forward to be an adult and still retreats himself because
of this fear of becoming everything we hated as kids: adults and their nonsense
rules.
Nevertheless,
experience is the best way of learning; we don’t learn how to ride a bike
without falling from it. We should comprehend teenagers and help them out
surpass their own adulthood phobia, promoting what Caulfield lacked the most,
dialogues with adults.
