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THE HORROR! THE HORROR! THE PROM!

I've been sitting here thinking about how much anti-fun it is these days being a kid.

I suppose it's because I spent the day yesterday in the back helping out in screening, where we're dealing with teenagers who have been brought in the night before... mostly from downtown Orlando where the indie/alt bars are filled with orange haired kids and the ex flows like wine in the fertile valley.

Example: 3 young girls brought in on battery, misdemeanor possession, runaway, resisting w/o violence. The usual stuff. Young like fifteen or sixteen. Orange hair... with red/purple highlights.

I guess that the weird hair was cool and with-it about five years ago in the urban centers of up North, but down here in Cracker Florida it just looks dorkie. They are so out of it, but trying so hard to be with it. Sigh.

One of them is weeping uncontrollably. She has never been arrested before and is afraid to call her parents. Once she does she discovers that her mother had not missed her. Now understand, this is 9 AM on a Monday. A school day has begun and her parents had not missed her from the night before.

I notice that she is cleaner than her two buddies. Her clothes are outlandish but fairly clean and she appears to have had a shower in the last week or so. The others... well.

"Why the tears? Worried about what your Mom will do?"

"No. Screw her. I'm just so lonely. No boyfriend. No future. No nothing. I hate all of this."

"Well, your Mom is coming and she can bring you a change of clothes and you'll only miss a half day of school. Not so bad."

"Yeah. I still don't have a date for the prom."

As I was listening to this teenaged angst I was watching her friend picking the blackheads off her arms and scratching like maybe she had nits in her hair. A chubby girl with dead white skin and greasy black nails. A jailhouse tattoo of the letters FTW on her right breast. Just the kind of young lady who is bound to score well in the prom queen contests at the local high school. Ick.

"You'll live." I got up and went and looked at the arrest affidavit... RWOV... she gave the cop a bogus name. Said she was Courtney Love. He didn't recognize it, but his partner, a female officer about five years older than this kid in front of me, did. I imagine that in a slightly previous incarnation, the lady police officer had orange hair and a grieving attitude. Looking for a chance at a different way out of the trap called mortality.

Somehow I always thought that Courtney was more fun.