Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - Aujourd'hui 08:24

The summer I turned silly

IF my teen years begged me to return to them, if they came bearing cake and the boy I was in love with when I was 14, I’d send them packing. There is no charm or bribe that could make me go through those years again. They were hell. And yet. And yet I know that there were small jewels tucked into that armour I wore then. A nice boy getting to his knees to tie my shoelaces at a mall. The girls’ limes where all we did was play music, talk about footballers (who were also, incidentally, boys), and where my hair was subjected to every experiment to get it to curl. I just missed the generation when it was normal to be asked to dance. So, if that happened (and it almost never did) the asker would be repelled into a great void just so one might be spared the teasing of peers. But our teens lurk within us. Sort of like your appendix: you don’t need it, and yet it’s there. And it can explode and kill you if it feels like it. That’s a fair description of how I feel when I think about those years. Decades later, I am a very repentant watcher of teen dramas. But recently, with little effort, I’ve discovered that I’m part of a giant sorority. To my horror, I feel the shame draining away. I’m late to the party as usual, but Amazon Prime’s The Summer I Turned Pretty seems to have become the centre of the universe. From Elle and Vogue to the New York Times and the UK Guardian, there are articles about why we’re all craving some of that summer loving. In a word, “nostalgia” is the thread that has been pulling women of multiple generations to the fictional world of Cousins Beach. But that doesn’t seem to fit it all. Not for me. I certainly didn’t grow up in a US east coast seaside town. And dear God, I did not have that house. (See how prosaic age makes us?) A recent text to my niece: “Why does Belly have all your clothes and how can we get them back?” “Facts,” she replies. Belly is Isabel, the show’s sort-of-protagonist. By now, anyone who’s as hooked as I am will tell you whose story they are more interested in than hers. There are no spoilers here: girl turns 16 and the two brothers she’s been friends with all her life suddenly discover her girlness. You know how the rest of it goes. It’s not nostalgia – or not only nostalgia – for me. It’s fantasy and if-only and regret and swooning all in one. Maybe those are all the same thing, maybe not. If you don’t yet know how complicated the heart of a teenage girl can be, I’m telling you now. The years of which I’ve been speaking are nothing without a soundtrack. There are so many Taylor Swift songs in this series I don’t know if they had an unlimited budget or if Swift should be credited as a producer. Does the Swift catalogue really speak to me? No. Rolling Stone doing an analytic list of all her songs that weave through the show does. Down to Hey, Stephen as Belly’s ringtone for her brother. Whose name is Steven. “Of course, Belly’s ringtone for her brother is Hey Stephen — though it might make more sense in the world of the show for Belly’s best friend, Taylor, to have the song as her ringtone for Steven.” Rolling Stone is…is…breaking this down. I didn’t stand a chance. Maybe you were like Belly and every boy who looked at you adored you. Maybe you did the adoring of that one magical girl. Maybe you stood outside those circles and wondered how they managed it all. Managed teening. Managed change and choices. Predictably, I can’t find a circle. So much of what holds me to The Summer I Turned Pretty is the water. The endless swimming. Walking around with your swimsuit under whatever you’re wearing because the beach is always possible. Swimming at night. Romance may be in the air for some people, but it’s always in the water for me. Growing up, the only time I came close to feeling less than hideous was when I was in the water. The swimming me was confident. The beach-walking me was happy. I hear confidence and happiness are attractive qualities. Wait, did I miss the summer I turned pretty? Remember to talk to your doctor or therapist if you want to know more about what you read here. In many cases, there’s no single solution or diagnosis to a mental health concern. Many people suffer from more than one condition. The post The summer I turned silly appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.