High School

I heard some co-workers comment that their teenager feels self-conscious all the time. Of course, everyone dismissed it with "every teenager feels that way," but then later it occurred to me that perhaps yes, teenager, you ARE being watched all the time.

1. I distinctly remember when I was dating Virgil, a lunch lady mentioned to me that she enjoyed his performance in a recent play. "He's your boyfriend, isn't that right?" Well, yes, but I didn't think the lunch ladies followed our entanglements as if we were featured in US Weekly.

2. It was astonishing how many utter strangers remembered me at my tenth reunion. There were 700 people in my graduating class. The strangers would explain that we had lockers in the same hall, or that I was in their geometry class. I never ever said a word in geometry, yet this stranger watched me closely enough to remember my name ten years later.

3. You don't even need a reunion now to realize how many strangers were watching you, you just need to get on Facebook and see all the friend requests from people you should remember from your teens, but don't.

Add to that all the times you met a friend's mom and she exclaimed, "Oh, YOU'RE Ellen. My daughter talks about you all the time." Remember how you and your friend would want to die of shame? That Mom was speaking the truth: all teenagers should feel self-conscious because they are indeed being watched.

Comments

[Big Dot]

Maybe it’s the teenagers who are out of step? So self-involved that they just don’t notice other people taking what will for them too be one day an ordinary interest in others?

[KC]

I think a slice of this depends on your "visibility" - some people are very generic-looking and do not occupy a niche spot in the social hierarchy (see: all those people who knew who you were but where you did not have the foggiest idea who they were). I was very visually distinctive as a teenager and that was a problem for reciprocation of things like "knowing peoples' names" and such (although I'm also just very bad at names; trying to improve, but... very bad at names).

Also, exactly how "everyone is watching me" any given teenager feels depends on a lot of factors; I remember phases that *probably* did not correspond to reality (from evidence, people were watching me more than I thought when I didn't think I was particularly being observed; but people were not as aware of specifics of what I was wearing, as long as it was within the range of normal, as I felt whenever I slightly changed something in my wardrobe). But yes: storekeepers are watching teenagers like hawks for shoplifting; other teens are watching teens; parents are watching teens; creepy old men are watching teens. It's a thing.

That said, odds are pretty good that the people that the teenager most cares about the opinion of are *probably* not watching them as much as they feel like they might be, because of the way the social hierarchy and attention scale usually works, unless the teenager's social "place" is being the butt of jokes for the group (in which case: oof, that is rough). But generally teens will be Very Aware of the person they're crushing on, and often oblivious to the person crushing on them (unless they've made things particularly obtrusive), and that sort of thing - lots of these are asymmetric.

(also: hooray for not being a teenager anymore! I'd like the body-that-mostly-works back, but otherwise... nope.)

[TheQueen]

Big Dot - oh! Burn! Yet such a gentle burn couched so daintily I cannot take offense. I probably was self-absorbed. But, things are so exaggerated as a teenager that there is no normal attention from others; it’s always too much attention.
KC - well now we are all dying to know, what made you distinctive?

[KC]

Unusual hair color, ultra tall and scrawny, and general visual similarity, while in motion, to a perplexed grasshopper walking on its hind legs. I mean, also socially awkward, nerdy as all get-out, introverted, and basically never wearing properly on-trend/normal clothing (or even just clothing that fit reasonably well), but I think the hair and height were most of how barely-acquainted people could identify me from over a block away...

This did not mean that Popular Teenagers, on the whole, paid social attention to me in any way (or cared what I wore/did). Just that most people I was around certainly could and did identify me when it was relevant and had an easier time sticking my name (or other facts) to me; also, complete strangers could find me in a crowd based on description with very little difficulty and substantial reliability (although there was doppleganger at the (large public) university I went to - so, I wasn't *unique* - just... adequately unusual to make recognition asymmetric, frequently).

Anyway, I can email you photos if you're *really* curious. :-)

[TheQueen]

KC - perplexed grasshopper - that’s great. No, I don’t need photos after that.