The Rise of a Teen...

Hal was a lucky young man.

He had been constantly kept aware of this fact since as far long back as he could remember…

He was from a well to do family… he apparently was a descendant of aristocrats, which supposedly made him… well classier than others… and both his parents had high profile jobs.

He had always received whatever he had wished for… at least that’s what he was told….

Surprisingly, he seemed to remember being told this repeatedly, always in the context of some request or the other of his being turned down… time and time again…. He never thought of questioning the statement though….

He was told, only as a kid of course, that he was loved by his parents more than other kids were loved by theirs…. Thankfully this particular declaration died out before he was old enough to learn the words abbreviated by… ‘WTF’… (I did not mean the days of the week… just in case)

He was made to believe, that he was leading a sheltered life in the Garden of Eden, while everyone around him… especially his peers were toiling in Erebus. The point being conveyed by this was… the ‘occasional’ instances when he was disallowed from doing something he really wanted… were ‘Count your Blessings young Hal’ moments…

In this unquestioned paradise ‘young’ Hal grew up to be… well a ‘not so young anymore’ Hal.

The old lines of the beauty of his life, as compared to others, still kept coming. Now a bit less decorated than before… as if people were disgusted that he still hadn’t been able to grasp it completely….

These days… Hal actually thought about them sometimes….

Having fallen into ‘ill-company’ by this time, Hal had picked up ‘skepticism’… a dangerous mindset he began to apply to the facts about his existence that he had refrained from questioning before….

The answers he received were not pleasant… unless of course you enjoy being taken for a ride… no pun intended….

So Hal began to speak out… and began having his words and questions squashed. It was logical of course… don’t we all agree that all rebellions need to be dealt with firmly?

Realizing that logic had failed Hal resorted to another of the evils he had picked up… ‘Self-dependence’….

He began to enjoy his own company more… and left lesser and lesser room for others… for them to actually bother him substantially….

He learned to survive on his own…!

Of course in a society guided by the doctrine ‘man is a social animal’ this was not entirely possible… yet.

Until the time he could earn by himself, he still needed to rely on others for food and shelter… (Clothes frankly weren’t a huge headache for him… they just appeared in his wardrobe and stayed for years…)

Beyond these few 'heavenly providers', he needed no other man to be at peace….

Rather he ‘wanted’ no other man, so he could have peace.

He grew up a bit more….

He turned into Hal… a Hal with strong opinions and a stronger will….

Predictably… all hell broke loose….

He refused to accept the crap he was being fed… (Yes… I am afraid he had learned the word ‘crap’ and other slangs by now… and he used them frequently… especially when describing his situation…)

He attempted to make all of his views understood and only succumbed to superior logics….

His ‘special’ upbringing turned into his personal concept of ‘hell’ and he strained to break free….

The restraints were tightened… by fools that perhaps thought that this would get him to be a docile pet again… it only choked him further….

He interacted with members of his generation and found out what all he had been missing… found what he was still unable to have…. Consequently he was informed that all the individuals he had conversed with were the ‘dregs of the society’… a tag which would soon become his own identity too, if he did not ‘mend his ways’…. For the first time in his life… he said, “I’d rather it did”…!

Hal had finally broken free!

The ‘protection’ he had been ‘blessed’ with… had raised him to be more of everything it had desired to prevent him from becoming.

He was a vessel filled with frustration and inexplicable angst… an entity that would love to shred all the virtues that were preached for his 'so called' benefit… a young man that was the nightmare of every ‘real grown-up’….

Hal had become a ‘Teenager’.