Read... if you think you're HARD enough.

I’ve got a cold so - armed with a box of Kleenex and some throat lozenges - I’m going to go all nostalgic on yo’ ass (blame it on several mugs of steaming TK Red Lemonade).However, I won’t give you my own regurgitated version of Kavanagh’s “A Christmas Childhood” because I think we’ve all overdosed on sentimentality over the last two weeks. So…. In this post I’m going to pay homage to the Junior Disco.

If you never went to a Junior Disco - if you were too cool for that scene, too shy or had overprotective parents.... I would say "of course, you didn't miss anything at all - the state of the place! The music was awful, the dresscode was so tacky, etc,etc,"  But I’d be lying. The fact of the matter is, I absolutely loved going to Junior Discos. They were, as my fourteen year old self would say,  “Claaaaaaaaaas!”

I really don’t know what was so class – class was something that you left at the door upon entering the establishment. But I loved it all the same... Chelsea Jerseys. Pink fluffy boots. The smell of sweat, Lynx and radioactive fake tan (Johnson's Holiday Skin. Chicken soup smell. Grand job). The way you could actually feel the bass in Tiesto's Traffic  bounce around your my ribcage. That rare tap on the shoulder, "Will you meet my friend?" That was the most glorious thing an insecure 14 year old will ever hear in her life. Meeting. Nowadays we say shifting. Meeting is far too ambiguous.

- I met yer man in town the other day.

- WHAT?! YOU MET HIM??

- Don't be silly! Of course I didn't meet him. I only met him.

 

Apparently score can be used? However, I only ever heard that from the ugg boot clad, Abercrombie army in the Gaeltacht. I’ve heard that Feek is used in the south west of the country...? Personally, I think Feek sounds like a type of fungal nail infection.

Shift is far less hassle. Everyone knows what a shift is. (However, there can be the odd day when your dad takes the initiative to do some housework *thick midlands accent* "Will you help me shift this table?" It’s strange)

-Will you shift my friend?

- No... But I'll shift you.

 We never kissed. Kissing in my mind means something more. It's affection. In that awkward 14-15 year old stage in your life... you didn't need affection. You needed the shift. And not just one shift, but lots of them. Shifting was like currency. It was validation. If you got the shift it meant you weren’t all of those horrible things that you thought of yourself when you looked at Rihanna in Kiss Magazine. Getting the shift was like a stamp of approval from the world. YOU’RE NOT UGLY/FAT/WEIRD! Of course you’re not! How could you be? A fifteen year old smoker in a Chelsea jersey thought you were alright enough to put his tongue in your mouth and feel your arse for 56 seconds – you’re just dandy!

We didn’t dance either. You don’t dance to Bobby Joe. You just stood there pushing your chest forward like some sort of pissed of rooster and fist punched the air - because you were too hard for anything else. Some clever people remembered to bring glow sticks. Instant hardness. Glow sticks were so handy because they co-ordinated so well with your outfit – ladies, you needn’t have bothered going to the Junior Disco if you weren’t wearing something LUMINOUS. If you were really up for the shift you stuck the glow stick down your tank top... It worked.

Of course, a lot more than just shifting went on in the junior disco... There was the odd fight (okay, there were a lot of them to be fair) and if you ventured into the darker areas over by the couches later on in the night you might have seen something that could’ve been from the Discovery Channel. 

Alas, the days of the Junior Disco were numbered when all of our Mammies found out about the shenanigans of the Junior Disco. Do you remember in 2009 Gerry Ryan (may he rest in peace) dedicated a whole hour of his show one morning to exposing what an awful place it was and that no parent in their right mind would let their son or daughter out to it?

It was a dark day for all Junior Cert students. It was even worse than the time that they threatened to shut BEBO down.

(You know awkward conversations with your parents? Those conversations. When they arise my first instinct is to just run out of the room, plugging my index fingers in both ears screaming "LALALALALA". Of course you can't really do that in a car going about 40km/hr because then you end up in a ditch with internal bleeding) I remember coming home in the car that day and my mother explaining to me what snowballing was.  

Needless to say, I wasn't allowed out to the junior disco for months.

 

Anyways, if I don’t stop writing about this I’ll start getting urges to stick on Maniac 2000 and start shouting (okay, quietly whispering – there’s a plumber in the house fixing our radiators) “WOOP THAT ASS”

 

Until next time :)