Tuesday, October 06, 2009

I am politically incorrect

I was on the tube in Glasgow (yes we have a tube system, its two wee trains that go round in circles, called the clockwork orange, don’t ask) anyway I stepped onto the train and there was a young teenage boy with an older woman hugging him. She was running her hands through his sticky up blonde hair and whispering to him, he giggled and pulled up his baggy jeans onto his skinny bony frame. You could see the elasticated band of underpants showing, boys do love showing their big man pants off!
I thought it was nice that a young teen boy would let his mum cuddle him like that in public; Ashley would punch me if I stroked her head in front of people at that age.
Anyway the mum had her arms around him from behind and was rubbing her head into his, then they kissed fully on the mouth and I stopped thinking it was nice. Then I realised it was two lesbian lovers, who were happy as hell and I was a freaky onlooker who mistook the small lesbian for a 13 year old boy. I was annoyed at myself for judging them as a mother and son, but truly that’s what they looked like, am sorry if this offends anyone writing about this. It was heart warming that they could love and kiss in public and we in Glasgow are not homophobic and open minded, but I mistook the blonde girl for a small boy, so what does that make me? A creepy fuckwit I assume!

I have also discovered something about people today. I am stunned by the written language and the way younger kids use the internet. Let me explain, there is the tragic story of two young girls who killed themselves by jumping off a bridge near Glasgow. Now the minute they died, their mates all went to their Bebo networking site and started to leave messages on the deceased girls’ pages.

The thing that struck me was the text language used by teens as they left messages for the girls who died. I read this on one of the girls Bebo page “Hunni, ets pure rbish that yer deed, a dinny know yay were hinnking aboot dain that”

Which is translated as “Honey, its pure rubbish that you are dead, I didn’t know you were thinking about doing that”

There are loads of messages in this text speak and it was quite compelling to read them, it is like a code that you start to understand slowly. Hunni= honey, gr8=great, Geeiz= give us.

Writing messages to the deceased is a relatively new phenomenon; it’s a bit like when people wrote on the memorial books for Princess Diana when she died, except its people writing on a website to dead people as if they can still read the messages.
I recall my mate waiting hours to sign the condolence book for Princess Diana and she wrote on it “It’s a shame you died just when you got your hair looking nice” which is fine, because the dead don’t really read the messages do they?

I believe that leaving messages like this does help the grieving process, and people feel they got to say something after a death that they couldn’t express elsewhere, I am just aghast at the spelling and language used on today’s networking sites by teens who have invented their own lingo.

Does that make me insensitive? I don’t mean to be, I hope the kids involved in those two deaths find peace as do the families surrounding the tragic girls.

1 comment:

Web Designer said...

No it doesn't make you insensitive. If the gay couple wants they could kiss in private. No offence when I see same gender people kissing, I feel like throwing up.