Left in a haze by the rise and fall of rites of passage for teenagers

The concept of the “must have” died off a bit during the worst of the recession. The “must have”, back in the days of disposable income, was a dress, pair of shoes or handbag advertised as such, in a catalogue or by a web retailer.

The phrase lost popularity when everybody went broke. If a purchaser must have money before they can buy a “must have” item, it’s just amazing how that imperative reduces to a conditional: “That’s the sort of dress I’d really like if I didn’t have to pay for essentials like food. Some day, maybe...”

But, at that time, the “must have” concept applied outside of the fashion world, too. One “must have” was a bit like that Lucozade ad on TV. It was the absolute requirement for a fighting, falling, puking, A&E-filling night out following the publication of the Leaving Cert results. For the last few years, the post-Leaving Cert all-night party has been a fixture, with the uploading of pictures of teenagers in extreme disarray and the broadcast of several days’ worth of parental worry.

This year, for some reason, the dedication to excess seemed to have faded a bit. Of course, mobile phone carriers captured and uploaded footage of kids, evidently footless after the ingestion of a lot more booze than they could handle, being carried home by friends, but the interesting thing was how few were those pictures. For the most part, the visual record was one of beautifully dressed and made-up girls and young fellows in smart casuals at outdoor venues brightly lit in the warm darkness: All colour and glamour and fun. The kids who were interviewed by websites before their evening began talked of having a great but safe night out. Which is precisely what they seem to have had. Neither local traders nor gardaí nor members of the emergency services came out the following day to report anything very serious.

It might be a little naive to suggest that perhaps the fashion for getting legless is waning among those recently vested with a Leaving Cert. But the fashion for long liquid business lunches died off in recent times, and some of us can remember an erga where — at least in creative circles — a day which didn’t involve such a lunch was regarded as stressfully and unreasonably demanding, not to say positively punitive. So if the older brigade can learn to eschew liquor at lunchtime, having committed years into developing a good solid lunchtime habit, younger people less trained in the consumption of alcohol just might be able to have a celebratory night out without needing medical attention at the end of it.

It would be interesting, in social terms, to locate at what point in recent history this particular rite of passage took hold, because half a century ago, it, like the debs’ ball, did not exist. And while it’s tempting to say that it rose without trace, the opposite is the case. The traces were left on city streets for subsequent sanding and mopping. They were left in visuals on mobile phones. They took the form of physical injuries and unplanned teenage pregnancies.

Even at its height, however, this particular rite of passage was mild compared to what happens in other parts of the world, like the bullet-ant ritual in South America.

This ant is so called becausse of the extreme and lasting pain delivered by its sting. Said pain is reputed to put the unmedicated pain of childbirth seem mild by comparison. Medical authorities maintain that the sting of a bullet ant is the worst physical agony of which the body is capable.

Logically, therefore, anybody living in an area where the bullet-ant is a real and present danger would go to considerable trouble to leave it alone and unprovoked. That’s not what the Satere-Mani folk, who live in the Amazon basin do.

Instead, they gather the ants, and sedate them in some local booze while someone else makes accessories from woven grass that look like tennis racquets crossed with oven gloves. The ants, whose sedation by then is wearing off, leaving them mad as hell and looking for something to sting, are then loaded into the gloves, into which an adolescent boy must then jam his hands, all the better to be stung ferociously and multiple times by the insects.

This particular rite of passage was designed by some ancestor as a way of allowing teenage boys to prove to the rest of the tribe that they can, with confidence, describe themselves as men. A reporter for the Discovery channel went through the experience recently on camera, and the clip on the web shows him weeping uncontrollably from the excrutiating assault on his nervous system until he starts to pass out.

What he did to his producer to merit this kind of punishment has not been established. Nor has it been established what he said to whatever member of the team came up with the original idea, but his suffering is so evidently extreme as to make incredible the fact that the boys who normally go through the ritual as part of their welcome to adulthood may have to volunteer for the torture 10 or 20 times. They don’t get away with one visit to the bullet ant gloves.

Considerably less painful, at least at the start, is the ritual of girls in an Indonesian tribe filing their teeth into the points considered “must haves” if, now they are women, they are going to attract a man. The pointy teeth have a passing attractiveness, but inevitably evoke shuddering thoughts of how painful the drilling must be, absent a dentist’s anaesthetic injection. In recent decades, however, the ritual is losing its magic. Increasingly, and perhaps understandably, the girls in that tribe are passing up the opportunity to own pointy teeth, which just shows you how smart adolescent girls can be.

The curious thing about all of the rituals which initiate the young in to the ranks of the older, whether in primitive or so-called sophisticated societies, is how often alcohol and pain are involved.

One can understand the element of danger frequently introduced: The Masai tribes where parents order their kid out into the wilderness and come back with a lion for tea clearly want the teenager to understand his responsibility, from that point onward, to put meat on the family table. Inflicting pain, or causing young people to inflict it upon themselves, perhaps registers the abandonment of the carefree days of youth, although it’s hardly calculated to make the kid warmly optimistic about the future. The alcohol suggests a global belief that adult life is greatly eased by the application of a Bud or whatever they serve in your home country.

That Leaving Certificate graduates seem to have cut back on alcohol consumption as part of their rite of passage has to be a welcome change.

Now, we just need to get rid of that more recently invented rite of passage, being hazed by internet trolls.

Now, we just need to get rid of that more recently invented rite of passage, being hazed by internet trolls