50 WORD MICROFICTION
Let’s Hear It For The Young
Thrifty Words Challenge #8: Youth
Is youth really wasted on the young, as Oscar Wilde famously espoused, or are the experiences we have — whatever they are — ours to learn and grow from?
My thoughts about the lessons of youth are prompted this week by the young people who share my home. Two more different teenagers you couldn’t find under one roof; one focused and living her passion, the other, energies scattered and breaking every rule she can.
What is it about youth? As humans, we are old(er) far longer than we are young. Yet to look at media representation — cinema, television, music — you’d be hard put to find any concept more glamourized than youth.
Magazines using fourteen-year-olds to advertise anti-aging creams, box sets featuring characters who look more airbrushed each unfolding episode, and let’s not get started on the music videos accompanying songs as disparate pop, hip-hop, and rap.
What do you remember about your youth? Or perhaps you are still young (25 or under) — what’s important to you right now? This week I challenge you to write fifty words on youth. Let’s hear it for the young times — but keep it brief.
