I did my Leaving Cert when I was sixteen years old, and I did reasonably well. Not as well as I should have, mind, what with having the motivation of a large, moss-infected boulder, but it was enough to get into University – possibly the last place you should be heading to if you’ve just turned seventeen and have the motivation of a large, moss-inf … Oh. Yeah. You know that part.

I toddled off to University 100 miles from home at seventeen, and naturally, it was a very exciting time. There was so much to see, so … many to do. There was no one to tell me I couldn’t go out looking like that. There was no one to wonder if I’d had one can of Dutch Gold too many. There was nobody to doubt that Hula Hoops truly were a food group all on their own, if I shouldn’t be more conscientious about attending my lectures, if so-and-so with the baseball hat wasn’t the kind of young gentleman I should be giving my time to. Of course I went a wee bit bonkers! It was the turn of the millennium, I was full of energy, and could finally do my own underwear shopping in peace. Life was good, and the world was wide; Eminem was on the radio, Gatecrasher Chic was in,  and we were tearing each other to shreds in the great PS1 vs N64 wars.

The reason I’m telling you all this is because I want you to realise that I do know what it’s like to be young and emotionally frilly, to be loud and obnoxious because the world has finally been revealed to you. At the same time, because I’ve been through it myself, and come out the other side with a cynical eye and a cauliflower ear, I feel well within my rights to say …

God, “new” adults are utter knobathons.

I say “new” adults because I refer here to 17-20 year olds, just about able to vote and hang out in pubs, just getting to know themselves. I don’t want to say teenagers because I’m not on about those spotty come-downs who live in people’s box rooms. New adults, fresh out of the classroom, breaking free of the tyranny of a loving home, attracted like moths to bright lights, upon which they’ll keep banging their stupid personas until some sort of identity arranges itself around them. Those “new” adults.

I was at a gig recently. I don’t consider myself a fogey -  although as I write this I am wearing slippers and two hoodies – and I was right up the front, bopping away and waving my set in the air like I just didn’t care. But right beside me were a couple of ridiculously obvious “new” adults, all thrift shop lamé and Jedward hair. That was fine, as the Jedward hair wasn’t obstructing my view. But the pair of them were spasming so enthusiastically, leaning into the people around them, bouncing on people’s toes, and playing air guitar at one another instead of paying any attention to what was going on on stage, that you couldn’t not define them as a couple of arrogant fuckbuckets. Had they gone down the back, they could have continued wanking each other’s egos to their hearts’ content – they had no more interest in the music than they had in being, like, sheep to the System – but they wouldn’t. They seemed to believe that their being “new” adults entitled them to prance about the place showing off their Individuality and Recessionista Credentials so as to dumbfound with awesome awe the rest of us plebs. But the  rest of us plebs had gone to watch the band, not to watch two hatchlings simulating oral sex on each other’s shrivelled little genitals. After being shoved around one too many times from the female, who was attempting limbo dancing in an angry crowd, I spilt my drink down her back. She didn’t notice. It was all the PVC she was wearing.

It got me thinking – was I ever that fucking annoying? And the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if I’m not still that fucking annoying. I like attention more than a drill sergeant, me. Was I merely pissy because the two electrocuted muppets in our midst were flahing my limelight?

Then I remembered how much I hate those smug, Individual (TM), entitled little cunts in the VO5 army ad, and realised that I was right all along.

Go and be a big deal somewhere else, young wans! Like the bottom of a Sarlacc pit or somewhere.