Those teenage Covidiots? That was me in my young days

LET me take you back. To 1973 or thereabouts. A different millennium and a very different world. It’s double accountancy on a Monday morning in Coláiste Mhuire, Douglas, Cork. Fifth year, if I recall correctly.

Whenever I look for a benchmark for boredom, I automatically think of those classes. Me, book-keeping and numbers were never a combination likely to inspire spiritual unity.

The unfortunate teacher, a decent man who must have wondered what he had done in a past life to warrant starting his week with the dim squad, was droning on. And on. I resorted to acting the maggot, the template pastime of my vaguely rebellious teenage years. That is, messing at the back and doing my John Lennon thing. Endeavouring to smash the establishment from the bottom up.

Ten minutes or so in, I had a substantial minority of the class in stitches and looking my way instead of his.

The exasperated múinteoir eventually lost it and, pointing my way, shouted: “Coughlan, one of these days we’re going to have a showdown.”

Rising to the challenge, I stood out into the aisle with my feet apart, arms spread and fingers twitching. Taunting.

Then, pretending to spit out chewed baccy, I sneered in my best Fistful of Dollars drawl: “Draw, sheriff. Let’s see how darn fast you is.”

I had gone too far. He turned red. He glowered. Words failed him and he charged down the room, upsetting desks, chasing me until he ran out of puff. Then I was off to the head brother’s oifig. Again.

I have loads of tales like that from my schooldays. In the vast majority,

I am the teenage nightmare that no teacher should ever have to put up with. The precise term they use in clinical psychology is a ‘little bollox’.

I was reminded of this the other day when I saw yet another picture on social media of teenagers behaving badly. That is, a whole load of little bolloxes at a house party doing exactly what grownups had told them not to do.

I had to ask myself where my mates and I might have stood on the great social-distancing debate if the coronavirus had been stalking the land circa 1973?

The answer is self-evident to me anyway. I know we would have acquired booze – ‘borrowed’ or bought – and found a free house for an illicit party.

We’d have listened to Bowie and Deep Purple as loud as the rafters could endure. We’d have drunk, whooped and danced. Not thinking tuppence about any virus. In fact, we’d have given it the V-sign and partied on. Nobody would have been any the wiser either. No, this is not a justification of any irresponsible behaviour. I’m fairly sure that the resurgence of this Covid curse is down to this class of carry-on.

But to expect these teenagers, who feel immune and immortal at this age, to understand the scale of the horror they are delivering on the rest of us is asking way too much.

So before you come over all sanctimonious, ask yourself how would you have behaved at that age?

Maybe you were a little bollox too.

Brew the right thing

SIMPLE things matter. Like on Saturday when we pulled into gorgeous Ashford, Co Wicklow, in the mood for coffee. There we came upon Green Beans, which brews the most delicious coffee from a converted horse box. Though it has been open only three weeks, business is buzzing, according to the barista and owner.

At a time when the world is being turned upside down, this little piece of positivity made my heart soar.

Sip local, folks. Sip often.