‘As long as we score with 5 people...’

TUMBLEWEED in the form of cans of Dutch Gold took hold of the city last night.

Early downpours resulted in a lack of hotpants, Ben Sherman shirts and mini skirts on the streets for the annual Junior Certificate celebrations.

But the downpours came in all forms as 15-year-olds waited outside Tesco for somebody to buy them Dutch Gold, vodka and cigarettes.

“We’re going for a Chinese first and then we’ll wait at the corner and ask somebody to buy us some drink,” said one student. And there we have Junior Cert night — although reports from Cork showed it started out a quieter affair than usual as rain and perhaps the match kept people from the streets.

“I think some of the lads from our class are going to watch the match first, but we don’t care. As long as we score with about five people tonight it’ll be a good night,” said one girl.

Score, for the record, means a kiss.

There were a few city venues hosting the Junior Certs last night. Among them Cork City Hall, the Savoy nightclub and Bondi Beach.

Another young boy told me, when asked what he would get up to for the night: “We’ll be drinking, smoking and taking drugs.”

I shrugged this off with a laugh in the hope he was joking.

But yesterday a posting on the internet seemed to sum up the feeling among the students hitting the town last night.

It showed an unnamed 15-year-old asking should he go out drinking when he gets his Junior Cert exam results.

Let’s call him Denis.

Denis tells the reader that it is tradition that all the kids that get their results go out that night and get drunk.

But he doesn’t drink. Hear the sigh of relief from his parents.

Here’s the twist: Denis had sips of alcohol before and his mother does not mind him having sips, but his issue is that his friends are drinkers and he does not want to stand there looking like a loser for not drinking.

He asks: “Should I hang with the girls who aren’t as rough as my other friends are?” But he also doesn’t want to deceive his parents by drinking.

The young student concludes by saying that when he is 18 he will drink, but that he doesn’t know what to do at the moment. Poor Denis in the depths of a dilemma.

But last night there were plenty of young people on the streets who could well have been friends of Denis. Plenty of kids looking to party, looking to have a good time.

And many believing this could not be done without drink.

More than 56,000 students received their results yesterday and according to local gardaí the night was a relatively quiet affair.

No major incidents were reported.

However, having celebrated Junior Cert night just over 10 years ago myself, last night I had an eye opener into how advanced the new crop has become.

I was afraid, very afraid.