Young & Stupid, Pt 1

When I was 14 I liked a boy and we started dating. He happened to be the brother of my (then) best friend. {At the time I thought my friendship would survive this, as she seemed to think it wasn't such a bad idea, and I had clearly had no foresight of how the eventual break up would affect us. }

This boy also happened to be 21 at the time, something I also lacked the outside perspective on, I was silly and thought I was the hottest thing getting around, and assumed that if a 21 year old guy thought I was interesting and attractive, it MUST be all about the assets I was bringing to the relationship. It couldn't possibly have anything to do with him and his mental state.
Now I will qualify this by saying I'm sure perfectly normal teenagers fall in love and live happily ever after with a 7 year age difference, but I'm sure there are 5 broken couples to every 1 intact.
My parents ordered me to break up as soon as they discovered the liaison, which of course as a 14 year old girl I railed against,

*hand to forehead* ....how could they possibly know what it was like, couldn't they clearly see I was the first girl to EVER fall in love with a boy older than me. My anguish must have been evident!

So we broke up, with collateral damage in that my friend and I never quite recovered our close friendship, and we drifted apart.

In the following years I realised he was a massive dropkick, and there was something strange about a 21 yr old boy who hangs out with his 14 yr old sister and her friends, with no friends of his own. I just thought they were so close as siblings. But no.

It wasn't until I turned 21 myself that the whole scenario hit home for me and I fully appreciated HOW weird it was that he hung out with us. In the development stakes, 14 and 21 year olds are worlds apart, and I couldn't imagine anything a 14 year old would say to me that I would find particularly interesting.

So it was at that stage that I learnt a valuable lesson. Parents don't have it in for you. They're simply old enough to see the bigger picture. I can't remember whether they tried to explain this to me at the time, its possible they did and I simply shouted at them until I felt I'd said my piece and conveyed how horrible I thought they were, and how unfair it all was. If they didn't try to explain, I can imagine why (see above) and I don't think I would have bothered, I would never have understood.

I saw that boy a few years ago. I was at TAFE, sort of like community college. I passed a classroom in the hallway that was full of "disadvantaged" and "special needs" students. He was sitting in the class, and it all made sense.

Feel free to leave your own Young and Stupid tale below.