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Tears, tantrums, stealing and smartarses: the COVID-club takes us all back to our teens

The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed society in many obvious ways, but it has also infected us all on less tangible levels and caused us to regress into a nation of hormonal teenagers, writes Christine Jackman

Apr 22, 2020, updated Apr 22, 2020

When I found myself in tears while milling spices, I knew this virus was finally getting to me.

For a start, until we were all put in self-isolation, “spice milling” was not an activity I had ever engaged in. Not unless you include producing pepper from a pepper grinder.

But in the past few weeks, I have been cooking like a woman stocking up to disappear into a survivalist bunker, aided by the second-hand Thermomix I bought earlier this year. (Ah, the Thermomix … but that’s a topic for another day, and multiple Facebook groups, Instagram posts and influencer blogs).

Butter chicken was my dish of choice on Sunday, so I threw the cardamom pod, cinnamon quill, and coriander, cumin and fenugreek seeds together to be milled. (Just typing those ingredients makes me feel exotic and domestically glorious, like an Antipodean Nigella Lawson.)

But then the noise began, followed unexpectedly by the tears.

The crunching, whirring and grinding; it all seemed so … violent. Surely there was already too much pain and loss in the world?

If you are rolling your eyes, rest assured. The rational part of me was also screaming: “what is the matter with you!? You are making butter chicken not working in the emergency department!” But I just kept sniffling. And I hadn’t even started chopping the onions.

I’d dismiss this as a momentary blip, a reaction to the accumulated pressure of disrupted routines and sharing a confined space with two adolescent boys, a restless partner and a smelly labrador. (The cat has been fine; like most felines, she was social distancing long before it became a buzzword.)

But this was not the only weird behaviour I’d caught myself exhibiting. Recently, I stumbled across Keith Urban, live streaming a gig from his basement in Nashville. Now, Keith seems like a good bloke. I remember regularly listing his band, Rusty and the Ayers Rockettes, in the Sunday Mail gig guide, when I was a cadet journalist way back in the day.

But back then, the Rustys were a covers band, specialising in ’80s hits. I’m not that keen on country music, by our Keith or anyone else.

Still, there he was, rocking away, with Nicole Kidman looking glamorously dishevelled in all black, dancing and handing him his guitars. Next thing, I was grooving along with them in my pyjamas, just like we were besties from when I knew him as a Caboolture boy with a mullet, playing at the Normanby Hotel.

But now … tears.

That’s when the penny dropped. I recognised these signs: mood swings, impulsive behaviour, tantrums and overwrought emotions. This virus has infected us all, in its way, and it’s transformed us into a nation of hormonal teenagers.

Look around your neighbourhood and your Facebook community pages. Tell me you haven’t noticed all of the common characteristics from your Year 10 classroom.

For example:

The smug prefect (also known as the narc): A friend of mine recently sent her 13-year-old son to the park at the end of their street to run off some energy. The kid bumped into a schoolmate and they began shooting hoops. Minutes later, they were bailed up by a woman they didn’t know, who stopped pushing her stroller to ask whether they were “members of the same family group”.

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The boys did what most boys that age will do when asked a question they don’t understand by someone they don’t know: they looked vague, shuffled uncomfortably and grunted something incomprehensible.

The woman whipped out her mobile phone and began taking pictures, telling them she would report them to police. You can bet your bottom dollar that woman was a smug prefect once, the type who would report you to the principal if you took off your school hat at the train station or let your socks sag around your ankles.

Then, there is the smartarse. He or she is the one who always slowed down lessons because they had to prove to everyone that they were smarter than the teacher. No matter how detailed the directions or explanations have been, they always had a smartarse addendum.

“Yeah but … what if I decided to take my dad’s ashes and scatter them at the beach with nine of my mates. We could have beers and a surf and that’d technically be a funeral, right?”

Or … “So if we all went to Coles and the kids grabbed shopping trolleys, it would be fine for the teacher to have a class there, wouldn’t it?”

And surely you remember the arts crowd? They lived for the school musical, the talent quest, and any other opportunity to engage in theatrics, including when Nick Rhodes, the keyboardist from Duran Duran got married, breaking the heart of Jill in Year 9, who was certain they were meant to be together.

We used to think they were a bit over the top and embarrassing (apart from Jill, who was a mate and needed my support), but basically harmless. Now we know they’re over the top and embarrassing and we love them. With their online ukulele lessons and Pub Choir and art challenges, they are keeping us – and our children – entertained for hours.

Then there were the emo kids, although in my day they were known as Goths. They never socialised, barely spoke, and spent a lot of time on their own writing angsty poetry. So they’re doing just fine with isolation.

Every school had a couple of kids who were mad, bad and dangerous to know. Sadly, they still exist too. They are the ones coughing on random strangers and stealing pasta and toilet paper out of the shopping trolleys of old people. The less said about them, the better.

Finally, if Australia is now a classroom of unruly and overwrought teenagers, who is the head teacher? I think we all know the answer to that one. (But here’s a hint.)

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