Young at Heart

Okay, I'm not old. I just turned 31, which I consider to be just barely old enough to justify me acting like an adult. And young enough to still call my parents for advice about stuff. I'm married, though, so that ups the relative age a few years. Given how many nights I stay in reading instead of going out and partying my youth away, I'm probably even older than I thought.

Plus I just got my first real wrinkle.

Oh god. I'm ancient.

*chugs a bottle of wine*

Okay, I'm better now. Normally, I could care less about age. I mean, on the internet, no one knows how old you are, right? And that's all that matters. Besides, in my day job, being older is an advantage (for some reason people get uppity about being charged $225 an hour to talk to someone who's younger than your grandchildren... and I can't say that I blame them!).

But I'm working on a Young Adult novel these days. And my heroine is in high school.

I barely remember high school. My overwhelming impression of it is that I couldn't wait for it to be over. I even considered graduating a year early to escape to college. I didn't, but man, I wanted to.

So how am I supposed to write a book with believable high school characters when I can barely remember what high school was like?

If I were older and had kids of my own, I'd pester them until they told me. If I had cousins or nieces or nephews that were in high school, you can count I'd be harassing them for the hip new things. But I don't. So short of hanging around the local high school until I get arrested, what's a girl an old lady perfectly aged female individual to do?

I do have some leeway because this is scifi YA, so a couple hundred years in the future, who knows what kids those days will be saying/doing? But attitude will probably stay the same (unfortunately!)

So I've been watching a lot of teen movies. Yeah, sure, they feature 20-somethings trying to pretend like they're high schoolers, but they do a pretty good job of getting across the stereotypical teenage drama. Any suggestions for movies or TV I should check out?

Otherwise, I'm up a creek until my non-existent children are conceived, born, and grow up.

Although I did just get a monster zit, so maybe I'm regressing. In no time, I'll remember what life in the super cool crowd in high school was like (Yeah, right. I was a nerdy loser back then. And now.)

Like, totes later, dudes!