Education is a knowledge of Things called Emo

Emo is Goth by another word, their word, a teenage word, I am lost to its origins. If only Mr Darwin was still alive.

My teenage son speaks in tongues that I need to decipher, secret words I do not understand and he does not wish to explain. A cultural generation divide based on language is perpetuated like a ball of string, one day we may find each other again. I hope.

Understanding will let me into his world. I want to communicate. I've been there. I'm old, I must have been there. But "there" has been re-decorated, re-freshed, and claimed by others. There is a new flag perched on the hill. The disco lives to a different beat on Saturday night.

It used to be "Simon says" and kiddy laughs; now its Emo says and snarls, smirks and sadness to order. To be Emo is not only a language, it is a way of life, a dress, a record collection or should I say download. Download collection somehow has no ring to it. There are no pictures on the record cover. How I used to listen to the music, but more how I used to pore over the cover and then to pore over the backwards text on the black vinyl. A text once dicephered, that may have converted me to satamism. I read on the wildside.

And the experiment that fascinated more than any bunsen burner, the playing backwards record test to corrupt my mind. I listened on the wild side too.

Now I fear somebody-else walking on the wildside, I fear that as well as man make-up , man skirts will be next. My acceptance of all things left of centre is reduced to, as long as its not my boy. I am correctly placed in a corner of prejudice. The prejudices I fought against as my parents thought that the world is a strange enough place as it was, without me wishing to sartorially stand out and, as they perecived, wanting to be thumped by any right of centre bad-doer.

Now its my turn, I seek to be an educator in the ways of the world that expectations may be sometimes great and a good ideal, but rarely fulfilled; but I am also keen not to transfer my failings in optimism called my experience. My ivory tower has been chewed over, to be repaired by mercury chunks just like my teeth, and it aint no ivory tower no more.

I want to connect with today's youth or more accurately today's youth that has my DNA marker strapped to his each and every cell.

I am aware sex Drugs and Rock'n'roll passes us by without most of realising two out of three ain't bad, and perhaps one is quite good; and one is quite good, once in a while, at least it gets you to next weekend. At least we not starving in some God forsaken war-zone, starring in every News Bulletin that it loses its impact like a fading wallpaper. We are not there. We are not in the poster world of charity donations of the guilty to make the Sunday lunch a bit more tasty and sod the waste.

We are in the picture postcard world of a Sunday lunch, shortened by lack of conversation and an urgent need to speak to his Emo mate to a def-bad-whatever backbeat.

Here I am a teacher in waiting that a son, my son is prepared to enter a dirty old world out there, where it sucks, dregs and rock'n'roll. These are the things I want to teach. Am I teaching pessimism. Am I shutting up.

My son, my teenage son has ideals, he has an ivory tower to build and I am proud that somebody is trying to prove me wrong. I may reluctantly need, may need to realise, may need to conclude I am there to pick him up when he falls down because he wants the experience of trying to stand-up alone.