Teenagers, part 2

You might have guessed from the previous post that this post was forthcoming, and if you were especially discerning, you might have guessed that the subject of this post was going to be teenage love.

There are two reasons why I became interested in this subject. The first is the Ramones, from whose orbit I never stray very far. The second is the correspondence theory of fiction. It occurred to me that teenage love was one of the rare themes in fiction that might actually have near-zero correspondence to truth; and yet, it is compelling enough to induce credulity in its audience, and indeed is SO compelling that few of us realize that it is a complete fiction. Instead, when we read or hear or witness some account of teen romance, we mistakenly assume that we, too, once experienced something similar, and that the fictional account is touching precisely because it is a reflection of something (say, “puppy love”) we once felt.

I may be wrong about all this, and I’m the first to admit it. It’s abundantly possible that my exposure to teenage love was so outside the picturesque American norm (due to all the missing out of that age which I discussed in my previous post) that when I hear someone else talking about it, I believe he must be making it all up. But still, I think there may be something to my claim. In spite of my various shortcomings and missed experiences, I’ve always been a pretty good observer. And my observation is that when we were teenagers, few of us ever cared about the substantial aspects of a relationship – ie, details other than status or popularity or PDA or the boyfriend’s access to a car. In fact, I’m not sure how well most teenage lovers know each other as people, if for no other reason than the fact that our personalities are so unformed at that age that there’s very little of the person TO know, for better or for worse. So instead, we base our affections on the things we can know; and these, inevitably, are often the surface aspects.

So why is it that when I hear such verses of teenage smittenness, I melt over in tender reminiscence? After all, I’m convinced that these narratives are totally fictional.

"I met her at the Burger King
Fell in love by the soda machine…"
(She’s the One)

That one’s the classic, the verse that spawned from me my minimally famous series of love haikus (I may post them later). There are others, like from the Queers. The Beach Boys.

Anyways. “Fell in love by the soda machine” – this is so perfect, so sharp, so dazzling! It captures all the beauty of one age, moment, thought, obsession. It makes me believe that I, too, once fell in love by a soda machine. But did it actually happen? At the age when I could have possessed that kind of optimism, I probably lacked the courage and spontaneity to take the moment and run with it like that. That is, at fourteen, if I saw a cutie by the soda machine, I wouldn’t have gone within ten feet of the area, but only married him in my head; whereas now, I might talk to the cutie, but only after I made up my mind that he was probably a worthless asshole anyways.

So the short answer is, no, most likely I never fell in love by the soda machine. So how is it that the fantasy of it is so persuasive? It's a very interesting case study in thinking about correspondence theory. People like me would hear a song like "She's the One" and idealize a time that never existed, and couldn't possibly exist; even so, we convince ourselves that we were happy then, and that we have lost something since that makes us now incapable of recreating the charm of those purer moments.