Up Front 06/13

In any given month we see a lot of books coming through this office. They are a mixture of local and not so local, some are self-published and many come from well-known publishers. We try and read them all and they join a growing library, but once in a while one of them falls off the shelf and gets picked up again and re-read. Last week I picked one up called 54 Simple Truths with Brutal Advice by Personal Development Consultant Mike Wash. The book is full of useful advice designed to help us get through life without letting the little (and big) things completely derail us. Included in the 54 simple truths are things like ‘Death is inevitable’, ‘You will experience injustice’, ‘You will be jealous and envious’, ‘You will be wrong about things’ and ‘You will make mistakes’. Each of these statements has a couple of paragraphs of wisdom designed to help us move on and get over it. For example, without making mistakes we would never learn, grow and become stronger. Or that being right and wrong is based on our best judgement at the time. I can certainly remember as a young teen being right about absolutely everything. There was nothing anyone, especially parents, could say that challenged my ability to see quite plainly that nobody—other than a few friends of my own age—had a clue about the real world. So I couldn’t help smiling this morning when a note came in about a piece of research commissioned by Lil-Lets to launch their ‘Becoming a Teen’ campaign. Apparently in any given year a teenage girl may slam the door 164 times. She will have around 183 arguments with her Mum; 153 arguments with her Dad; 257 arguments with siblings; 127 fall outs with her mates and spend on average 274 hours on the phone. I have no doubt I was equally impossible and I’m sure I slammed the door a few times too, but I question the statistic about amount of hours spent on the phone. Surely in this age of the Smart Phone, that figure is a bit low.