Secret Diary of an Irish Teacher: Remember when you were a teenager?

Pic: Sebastian Scheiner

I’m glad my kids aren’t teenagers yet. It’s tough being a teenager and a lot of the time, I’m not sure they get a fair enough deal. I need time to prepare myself for it.

Do you remember being one yourself? I certainly do. I sported ripped denim hotpants, inadvisably short of course, with opaque tights beneath - Madonna style. I smoked Silk Cut Blue behind parked vans, loitered around shopping centres, and thought about boys. I was a textbook teenager, bumping along the road to adulthood with the grace and knowledge of a bollard.