On potential

I'm in Vancouver, and seem to have booked into an hotel in the "backpacker" district; went out for a meal and then sat outside Starbucks for a coffee afterwards. While I was ordering the coffee, a much-pierced girl came in to ask to use the "washroom". Outside, she was with two guys (and a dog); one of the guys clearly affecting the style of a character from Burgess/Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" (bowler hat and eye make-up, etc.).

Not having a book to read for once, I reflected on what their experience might be; they were hanging around, bumming cigarettes, but not destitute and still concerned about their style. They seemes to be undergoing an initiation ritual of a kind; a brief flowering of rebellion before they became the corporate lawyers or shelf-stackers or even politicians of the future. Only thing was, it looked as though much of the initiation experience was deadly boring at the time. Perhaps it will acquire a rosy romantic glow in the future.