J-Lo thinks her kids are bad? I was the worst 15-year-old you can imagine

Teenagers are demons – and when I was 15, I was their unholy king, writes Ryan Coogan

I usually send these articles to my mum so she can brag about me on Facebook, but I think I’ll be keeping this one quiet

Ah the life of a teenager. Playing videogames all day. Adventures with your mates. Smoking in the park. Paying a sketchy guy to gran you a bottle of cider. Terrorising your parents so badly they ask God what they did to deserve you. Normal kid stuff.

When Jennifer Lopez went on The View this week and opened up about the difficulties of raising teenagers with her husband Ben Affleck, I sympathised with her. Bringing up kids is difficult, especially in the context of a blended family. When she talked about the way her twins wouldn’t talk to her, I understood exactly what she was talking about. Not because I have kids myself – don’t be ridiculous; I’m a spry 33-year-old, I’m basically just out of high school myself – but because teens are demons, and when I was 15, I was their unholy king.

It makes sense. According to scientific studies, parents tend to agree that 15 is the worst age for teenagers, since it’s the age when we experience a perfect storm of hormones and academic stress that turns us from innocent little mogwai to even little gremlins.

The funny thing is that if you were to ask most of the adults I grew up around, they’d have told you I was the nicest kid in the world. Comparatively speaking, I guess that was true to some extent; I grew up in such a bad area, that anything south of car thief made you one of the “quiet kids”. Not destined for prison? That’s what we in the North call a Salford sainthood.

It’s difficult to write about my teenage years, because I’ll start telling an anecdote and realise about halfway through that what I’m describing is in fact a crime. So, sorry if I’m a little light on details, but I’m no snitch.

What I can say is that I was proficient in the dark trifecta of bad kid behaviour: drinking, sneaking out and lying to my mum. I don’t think there was a weekend that went by that my friends and I wouldn’t tell our parents that we were staying at one of the other kids’ houses, only to head off to a park or some random person’s house with a crate of Carling and a pocketful of bad intentions. We used to have these parties every single week, and I don’t think there was a single one that went by where I didn’t say something obnoxious to a stranger and get into a fight.

It probably won’t surprise you to find out that I was a really bad student, too. It’s a miracle that I ever made it to university, because I spent more time drinking on the car park behind my school than I spent in class. I still have this huge scar on my left elbow from the time me and my mate cut English to drink cider, fell asleep in the sun, and then went skidding across the gravel when the police woke us up and we tried to run away.

None of that stuff really bothers me though. What does bother me are those times that I turned that awful attitude on my mum, and made her feel small. She was a single mother on benefits that barely kept us afloat, raising a horrible teen and a soon-to-be horrible pre-teen. She was a great mum, and she performed superhuman acts of kindness and understanding in raising us. I didn’t see any of that at the time though, because like most kids that age, my world was the only one that mattered.

If I could go back and change anything it wouldn’t be the smoking, or the class-cutting, or the parties, or the drinking. It would be the simple fact that I spent the most critical years of my life ignoring the person who kept me safe at a time when I wasn’t interested in or capable of doing that for myself.

I usually send these articles to my mum so she can brag about me on Facebook, but I think I’ll be keeping this one quiet. Do me a favour and don’t say anything to her either. Don’t forget, snitches get stitches.