TeenTimes/Christine Orford: Teenage romance is a menace to our society and unfortunately, it is so much more prevalent in these summer months.
Maybe it's because it's sunny people seem to believe it is their right to parade their loved ones by kissing, and worse, in public in a style that, if in a movie, would increase the cert to over-12s.
Or maybe it's the influx of Mediterranean blood into Ireland during the summer that does it. A kind of marking of one's territory against the good-looking Spanish youth.
Whatever the reason, I think teenage romance should be outlawed - I hope you are listening Michael McDowell - and these are my reasons:
1. Girls cooing over older boys in high-pitched, giggle-strewn conversations, that give every poor forced eavesdropper within a mile radius a splitting headache. Not only are they incredibly irritating, they are repetitive, with the words "cute" and "sweet" being used so often you start to regret their invention. If you've heard one of these conversations you've heard them all. If you've had one of these conversations you've had them all. It's not worth the frustration it causes. Do yourself and everyone else a favour and just stop before you start.
2. I believe if you counted up all the lies told in the course of a year, over half of those would be thanks to boys' exaggerations about their encounters with girls. Either that or there are some seriously confused boys out there. It seems every hand held is turned into a kiss and every kiss . . . well, let me put it this way: if everything every adolescent boy said was the complete truth, the birth rate would increase by 400 per cent within the fortnight.
3. The "our song" syndrome. This is akin to robbery on many levels. It robs the joy of the song from family members and friends who are forced to listen to it on a loop for the duration of the relationship. It wrecks the song for the couple after they break up when it's banned listening for both parties. And lastly, the couple did not write the song, therefore, it is not their song at all. If someone wants a song devoted to themselves and their significant other, maybe they should write it themselves.
4. Teenagers shouldn't be given power over other people's genitals, or even their own. Regrettable situations may ensue, not to mention some nasty fungal infections.
5. No other age group can quite manage the mass self pity of the teenage nation. Unrequited love breaks a million hearts before they sit their junior cert. Their vocabulary is then immediately pared down to the words "why me?" and "you wouldn't understand". Funny that, I don't think I want to.
Sitting here in my kitchen in the first hours of tomorrow, I don't expect to change the world, I am only one person. Yet there is a voice in my head saying that, maybe, just maybe, someone somewhere will read this, and it might strike a chord. They might decide, as a result of my article, not to devour their partner's face in public, and for that I would be grateful.
It's like they say, if you can touch one person (or abstain from that, in this case) it makes it all worthwhile.
Christine Orford (16) lives in Bayside, Dublin
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