WERE your teenage years a huge disappointment? These are the things you thought would make them magical but didn’t ever happen:
Summer romances
Too many teen novels had you convinced that every summer you’d meet a gorgeous guy or girl, share a passionate, six-week love affair, and then write dreamily romantic letters to each other for the rest of the year. Shame you spent every holiday in Torquay with your gran, then.
A celebrity encounter
Everyone’s cousin had a highly convincing story about running into Noel Gallagher at their local shopping centre, so you reckoned it was bound to happen to you at some point. Sadly, the closest you ever came was seeing Lesley Joseph in a pantomime, which was just a bit pathetic, especially as your dad fancied her.
A glow-up
While liberally applying Clearasil to your pimpled face, your mum always promised there would come a time when you’d transform into a butterfly, and all the girls would be desperate for your attention. It never happened, and now you’re also starting to lose your hair.
A secret talent
Many great coming-of-age stories hinge on the subject having a life of incredible success after discovering they’re naturally amazing at the guitar or karate, and you always assumed your secret skill would emerge sometime in your teen years. Needless to say, the only thing you got really good at was masturbating.
Quality anecdotes
When your parents told stories from their youth, they were tales of coming across unexploded WW2 bombs or sneaking out of the house at night to go to a Sex Pistols gig. Sadly, your days spent inside playing Donkey Kong haven’t produced similarly fascinating anecdotes.
An inseparable group of friends
Books and films convinced you that once you’d found your gang at school you’d all be friends forever, going on adventures and sharing life’s burdens into old age. What actually happened? You grew apart, made new friends based on criteria other than ‘sits next to me in science’ and now nod just awkwardly at each other in the supermarket,
