I know this isn’t cool, but they do. Like nails to a blackboard. Like knife screeching on fork. Like Stephon Marbury in a starting lineup.
Am sitting in Starbucks, trying to work. Two girls, probably 15 or 16. The one is wearing a sleeveless vest without a T-shirt. She has writing scribbled all over her hand. She’s listening to her iPod and singing loudly. She is crying to be noticed. Begging to be noticed.
Technically, these are the kids I should like. The outcasts. The thespians. The singers. And, in theory, I do. But there’s something about performers—young and old—that’s just so … so … so … neon. Their lives are spent begging people to clap for them. Which, if you think about it, is an odd act in and of itself. We take one hand. We take the other hand. We repeatedly slam the two mounds of bone and flech into one another.
We all like attention, obviously (Well, most of us do. I happen to have a lovely older brother who has never, as far as I can tell, sought the spotlight. I admire him greatly or that). But some like it more than others. Now the girl is singing REALLY loudly. I can’t say anything, but it’s really fucking irksome. I’m irked.
Not that I have a right.
