Photo via Wiki Commons
It is an emotional time, being a 13-year-old boy. It is probably similarly disconcerting being a 13-year-old girl, but I cannot personally relate to that: all I remember is being 13, and a boy, and caught with my legs stretching between two unconnected train carriages both careening in slowly drifting directions on high-speed rails, one marked "a very sincere desire for + worry about the appearance of all-over body hair" and another marked "a devoted and unwavering love for the original 151 Pokémon".Being 13 is being a man and a boy trapped in the same monstrous and pulsating body. Being 13 is lying face down on a pillow sometimes and just, like, crying for a reason you cannot personally explain? Being 13 is being on the cusp of something great – you can feel it, percolating through you, the energy of being alive and all of what's to come – but also very much being happy with a £2.50 vacuum-sealed pack of collectible cards with the hope that one will be a shiny. Sometimes you will sit and look at magazines with photos of cars in them and imagine what you will be like in four years' time, tall and long and strong, gently revving with one foot the purr of a motor.Sometimes you will imagine yourself older, this tiny boy's head on a man's body. When you are older you will be able to go to Frankie & Benny's literally any night of the week. When you are older you will be able to stay up until midnight whenever you want to. When you are older you will be able to buy FIFA on PS4 without begging and doing chores for your mum in the weeks leading up to release. When you are older you will be good at football, and sprinting. You will be a foot-and-a-half taller than those rough boys who keep throwing your bag in the bin and you will let them know about it. You will go to their work – they will all work at car washes, you imagine, or in a failing sandwich shop buttering the bread – and you will pay for their services with a crisp £50 note. They will look at you with sad eyes and know that they are a failure and you alone are a success. You will pretend not to remember them when you do, because you will have the last laugh. You, you, you. Ha–ha–ha ha–ha!Being 13 is quite hard, is what I am saying!But it is also studded with rare moments of sheer and unrelenting joy. Look, here, from the Daily Record:
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!!!Two schoolboys ran amok after being locked in an East Kilbride superstore overnight.
The boys, thought to be aged 12 and 13, roamed the aisles of Sainsbury's Kingsgate for four hours after hiding before the store closed.
!!!!It's claimed the pair helped themselves to hundreds of pounds worth of food and booze as they roamed the aisles before being discovered at 2AM by stunned early-morning workers starting their shift.
!!!!!It is believed the boys had around £300 worth of goods on them when they were eventually found.
!!!!!!A source told the East Kilbride News the boys hid in the clothing department until the store closed at 10PM last Monday before "ransacking" it.
The source said: "The two boys were locked in for hours as the doors get locked at 10PM and only open to let customers out who are still at the checkouts at that time.
"It was the early hours in the morning when they were discovered by one of the night workers down an aisle.
This is amazing. This is amazing. Two tiny Scottish boys hiding in the clothing department at an East Kilbride Sainsbury's. Hidden giggling between oversized Minnie Mouse-print pyjamas tops and light-blue V-neck mum jumpers. Sitting still, perfectly still, until the shutters come down. And then, when the coast is clear enough, ransacking the place for £300 worth of food and booze. What an adventure. What a rush.Being locked in a supermarket is a personal dream of mine. It's how I always imagined I would wait out a zombie apocalypse, or something: get to a Tesco Extra, put the shutters down, throw all the fresh produce in the freezer before it rots, work your way through the bread and cheese and donuts before they expire, drink bottled water, slowly go deranged and make store announcements to no one, work my way around my kingdom sat in a trolley and propelled by an oar-like mop. Part of me likes to think my zombie apocalypse supermarket idea is just being sensible – good security, a decent supply of food and drink, wide aisles I could feasibly escape an errant zombie in before clonging them with a spade – but secretly, I think, it's just wish fulfilment. Imagine being locked in a supermarket. I would just eat loads of Bounty-flavoured bakery cookies and get gigglingly euphoric on fridge-cold milkshake. Work my way through a family-pack of Peperami. Peel off and eat unaccompanied single slices of cheese. Whole tub of ice cream and a big thing of pop. The dream. Can we also talk about the fact that they racked up a £300 bill in a four-hour rampage? That's incredible. I could barely do that if you gave me two trolleys and asked me to walk around the shop at my leisure. Recall being 13 years old: how ignited you are by oversized oven pizzas, and untouched boxes of double-layer Cadbury's fingers, and entire bottles of Dr. Pepper, and a big share-sized bag of Babybel. Huge thing of Jelly Babies. Half your arm down a Pringle can. When you are 13 you think it is normal, and not obscene, to eat an entire six-pack of Twiglets in one go. White bread sandwiches with margarine and a whole thing of wafer-thin honey-roasted ham. On the side? A whole bag of Walker's Sensations. For pudding? Leave a pint of Ben & Jerry's on the side until you can drink it. To drink? Three litres of full-fat Coke, please. Being 13 is basically a year-long assault on your body by either your hormones or your brain. Embrace it.The Daily Record say: "Management called the boys' parents and reported the incident to police," because they are bad grasses, but I have an alternative solution: Knighthoods for both of them. In 240 minutes they managed to consume £300 of junk food and, I'm guessing, mid-brand vodka. That is an incredible, hellacious amount of food. They were given a golden opportunity to be 13-year-old boys and they took it to the absolute limit of their ability. They basically embarked on an illicit, after hours, hormone-fuelled version of Supermarket Sweep. They would be rewarded as we would a king.@joelgolby"The two boys had worked their way through hundreds of pounds worth of food and alcohol and helped themselves to various other products before being discovered."