Teenagers!

I have now reached that point in life when all the Police Officers look far too young, not only do I not know the lyrics to the songs being played on radio 1 but now have not heard of any of the artists.

It was bound to happen eventually and I accept it in good grace. Despite the signs of advancing years, I still do consider myself hip and trendy, able to relate and communicate with the modern youth. Had that one shattered last night.

Called to a 16 year old who had slit her writsts. Now I do actually have a vague idea about what is going through the mind of teenagers, I was one once. Do appreciate the whole, the world hates me thing and life is too much to cope with thoughts that rattle around your head at that age.

This call was beyond my undertanding though. On arrival at the address we were met by a young girl who was the patients friend. She informed us that her mate was getting ready upstairs and would be down shortly. We were not allowed in as her parents were asleep and they would go mad if we woke them up.

I pointed out that as she had seen fit to call an emergency vehicle at 3am, they would understand, also I had no intention of examining her mate in the front garden! This prompted the usual teenage response 'Fine then, you don't care that I am going to get into trouble, I hate you!'
When her friend finally came downstairs, I found her to have hesitation cuts to both wrists and the right one was still bleeding slightly. I patched this up and then told her she needed to go to hospital, more to understand why she did this in the first place. I then got the whole story, I won't bore you with the details but it seemed to boil down to the fact that her neighbour had accused her of having a party whilst her parents where away and it's so unfair!

As we were leaving, she asked her friend to come with her, at this her mate launched into this stream of abuse about how as she is into self harm and this suicide attempt is only a way of pinching her thing! 'you only did this because I do it and you want to copy me, it's my thing to cut myself and you are just a copycat!'

They then proceeded to have this huge row about it. Aaaargh! Teenagers!