Bring back the Awkward age....

As my birthday approaches and I head further into my later life (I'm 35) I have gained the wisdom to reflect on my awkward teenage years.  I'm doing this because now that I have my own teenager (Devils sporn).. I look at her and her friends and they just don't seem to be going through this stage, which really doesn't seem fair or right.  They are all gorgeous and sparkly, I'm wondering if zits have been genetically modified out due to all the preservatives in our food these days as they don't even seem to have any of those?
At 11 or 12,  I was wearing bubble gum jeans, Poo Pants and kung fu shoes.  At 13 and 14, I was strutting out in trackies with an MC Hammer T-shirt and thick white slouch socks teamed with Boat shoes or Subways (*cool talk 'subs').  We had random hairstyles and bushy eyebrows.  One thing I will say was "Thank god we had no Facebook or digital cameras back in my day".  If you took a photo back then, it took 3 weeks to develop cost you 40 bucks and then you pretty much missed the subject and either filled the photo up with the top of someones head and a lot of sky or your mates shoes and grass.  The beauty of this is that I wasn't alone, I had fantastic friends who were all roking out the same or equally damaging fashion statements.
 My 21st was littered with traumatic proof of my cringe worthy teenage angst. I assumed that when I grew up I would be able to pass this right of passage of being humiliated in front of all your friends and family, on to my own children.  I was really looking forward to it.
My first job at 15, was wearing a green sack and being one of the bored minyins sitting on an itchy chair getting paid $2.49 per hour to scan and bag your weekly groceries...Yip I was a check out chick.  Pulling off my own fingernails would have been more entertaining.  The Teenagers first job looks like it might be working at 'Cotton On' or 'Factorie' where they get 50% off the clothes they all buy anyway and where the music is played so loud I can hear it from the other end of the mall (jeez what a grandma) So she will get to dress up and have a dance party with her friends, all while getting paid pretty well and still no ammunition for her 21st.  Wheres the life lesson in that? I think having a shit first job and dodgy wardrobe makes you the person you are today??

I would've added a photo of me back in the day to prove the title of this blog but I left all my crap in my parents garage...hmm do I see a pattern emerging?! 

Rip Off Trackies?? The only people who were in that much of a hurry to get out of their pants should've been Athletes or Strippers and I was neither!