When I was at secondary school, a girl in my class stole my mobile phone (a Nokia 3310, with a record-breaking score on Snake, no less). She denied it, but I knew. So, emboldened by hormones and brainwashed by American teen shows, I decided to confront her. I would do it for all the teen nerds who couldn’t bear to explain to their mother how they had lost yet another mobile phone (six in three years).
“Listen,” I said, “I’m not a grass, but I’m also not a mug. I know you took it, so just give it back and we’re good.”
The boys and girls were gathering around us now, arguing among themselves for a front-row seat to what would – undoubtedly – be the fight of the century.
Her lips curled into a snarl and she spat out the words: “Are you mad? Are you totally crazy?”
Then she lunged. She grabbed the collar of my shirt and yanked it up over my head, leaving me stumbling around like a pantomime guillotine victim. “You’ve lost your head, mate!” she said, giggling, while keeping hold of the collar above me. Laughter erupted across the playground for what felt like eternity. She leaned into an area of the shirt that she assumed to be my ear, but was actually my forehead, and said, “Why don’t you piss off home, yeah?” Then she let me go.
I took her advice and pissed off home as fast as I could. “Life is not like television,” said my mother, unamused at my show of courage. “You’ll learn that as you grow up.”
I thought about that incident this week, after an argument with my boyfriend in the Ikea car park. You know the sort: it starts off as a light bicker about satnav and, “Why did we buy satnav if you won’t listen to it?”, before spiralling into a full-on row with door-slamming, huffing around the soft furnishing section and speaking in insults (“A rug, eh? Another thing to walk all over, I see!”).
On television, the next scene would be a make-up or a break-up. Someone would cry. Maybe I’d pack a bag I just happened to have to hand, without having to spend 10 minutes rummaging in the cupboard under the stairs. But in real life, nothing like that happens. Rather, it just goes back to normal; without mention, without action, a spring returning to its original shape.
Or maybe it is like a different kind of TV: our fight might have sat well in a BBC Four brooding Nordic noir. I now know that when Mum said life wasn’t like television, she just hadn’t watched enough of it. As far as I’m concerned, adulthood should be the greatest show on Earth – and I, for one, am looking forward to directing it.
