Readers Block

For the last couple of days I have been hobbling around my house, in agony, using a pitching wedge as a crutch as I attempt to get from one room to another. I’m not sure exactly what happened but I have had a sore ankle for the last five days. Actually that should read ankles as the pain miraculously jumped from one ankle to the other.

I’ve been to the doctor (again with the aid of my golf club) and he’s suggested further tests once we get the pain under control. I have a theory on the cause of the problem but that is based on diagnosis by Google so I’ll wait till the experts confirm my suspicions.

Boredom truly is a killer. Sitting around watching daytime TV is doing my head in. I know I’ve written before about turning the telly off and reading a book or doing something constructive instead but there are two problems with that.

Today is the first day that the pain hasn’t been such a distraction that I can actually sit and write something. Concentrating on reading would have been an exercise in futility. Secondly ever since I began my efforts and writing my own novel (some days it’s a masterpiece, others its awful and a waste of time and effort,) I’ve found it really hard to finish any piece of fiction that is more than a few pages long.

I don’t know what it is exactly; I just can’t keep going till the end. I read the first couple of chapters and then I just stop. It’s not that I don’t enjoy them as such; it’s more that it is physically impossible for me to open that book. In the last twelve months I have started novels by Stewart Lee, T.S. Boyle, Cormac McCarthy and Graham Greene among others and have yet to finish one.

The latest is A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving, one of my favourite authors. Up to page the 196 the characters are intriguing and although a plot has yet to reveal itself I want to know what happens to them. The book itself was a gift from a loved one and has a lovely personal inscription which makes me determined to finish it.

The thing is I’ve been stuck on that page for the last three weeks. There is at least another 500 to go. Every time I pick it up I start texting or I fall asleep or I think about something I want to write myself or…I continue to make excuses for a lack of self discipline. When I was younger, before fancy digital TV and android phones a few days in my sick bed usually meant catching up on reading.

So for the next few hours, I’m switching off my phone and my laptop and I’m going to read Owen Meany and I won’t switch them back on until I’ve read at least the next fifty pages. Take that technology.

Unfortunately I’ve left it upstairs beside my bed so it might take a while before I can even get started. Now where is that golf club?

Adolescent

It would appear that my fifteen year old brother is turning into something of fairly cool individual. He has started to form his own identity with hobbies and opinions of his own. Growing their hair and taking an interest in their appearance is probably standard for guys his age but is learning to play the banjo and a general interest in traditional music?

Shouldn’t he be playing computer games, planking (it’s an actual thing) in shopping centres and mugging grannies? I’ve been led to believe that the youth of today had been assimilated into text speaking dumbots who are willing to sacrifice any kind of dignity to become a YouTube meme.

From what I remember, it is far from easy being a teenage boy. Your body starts doing things you were not expecting at the most inopportune time. Hair begins to spurt on appendages and in orifices. You don’t know which way is up unless you use a seemingly constant erection as some sort of body compass because it’s always pointing that direction.

Yes, greasy hair, spots and loss of voice control make adolescence hard enough but body betrayal is only the start of your worries. Peer pressure and outside influence can be just as challenging. It takes a strong will to be your own man when you are still, for the most part, a boy.

It can be time in your life when the last thing you want to do is stand out so it can appear that the thing is to just blend in with the crowd. Wear the same clothes, do the same things, same is good, different is bad. You are still trying your personality out for size, so the more friends you have that approve of you the better.

With boys it can be hard to tell if your part of ‘the group.’ I’m don’t know if it’s just an Irish thing (I’m pretty sure it’s not) but boys make fun of everyone, whether they are friend or foe. They insult each other’s mother. They use cruel and mean nicknames. They highlight each other’s difference. It can be hard tell who is on your side and who wants to belittle you.

This was certainly the situation in my case. I was just about the most average teenager you could find. I wasn’t particularly gifted at anything, but neither was I rubbish at stuff. I was ok at sport, ok at school work, ok at being a teenager. I was made fun of and pranked but I would never claim to be bullied. But when I remember other kids and how they were treated, bullying is exactly how I would define it.

On a class trip, ‘the group’ once grabbed a boy, a guy I would have called a friend of mine, picked him up and threw him in a fountain. I knew it was going to happen, I’d been told earlier they were going to get him as soon as the teacher was distracted. I could have warned him or I could have tried to stop them. I didn’t. Maybe I thought if I stood up to ‘the group’ then I would be the one taking the swim.

I don’t think anyone in ‘the group’ turned out to be a mass murderer or corrupt politician. They are all probably decent people with families of their own now. But the pack mentality of teenage boys can lead to them doing some very horrible things.

Everyone wants to be the alpha male and the best way to show that is to force your way up the food chain and take out those weaker than you along the way, and if you can’t be the leader of the pack it’s better to be with him than against him. When you are trying to show the world that you are becoming a man, boys can behave like beasts.

I don’t think the mistakes of a teenager should be held against them. It’s a very confusing time and there are bound to me missteps along the way. But if you can be strong minded and try to stand up for what you believe, you will do just fine.

The important thing to remember is, that if it feels like life is hard at the moment, it changes, I promise. Whether that’s for better or worse is up to you. You’re at the start of a journey and you should have a good time figuring out who you are and if you need any help you can always ask.