Temple Cloud

Dear Temple, You’re making it sound as though something terrible happened to me just because my brothers were born.   That’s not fair!   They didn’t do anything wrong by being born, and my parents didn’t do anything wrong by having them (except that they were twins, so that makes three of us when parents shouldn’t have more than two children, but that was just an accident).   Most older siblings get a new baby brother or sister when they’re three, and most of them are fine with that.   My parents didn’t neglect me or stop loving me.   They’re the best parents in the world!   Don’t you dare blame them just because I’m weird!   I’m weird because I’m autistic, not because of anything they did wrong. Phantom of the Library   Dear Phantom, I didn’t mean to sound as though I was blaming mum or dad.   They are good parents, and it helped that at that stage, mum’s father lived on the floor below us.   All three of them did their best.   Mum was exhausted with looking after two babi

Dear Temple Cloud, I left a note to Father Christmas saying this was the last time I’d be hanging up my stocking, as I would be a teenager by next year.   Okay, I’ve known Father Christmas was my mum since I was eight, and I think I’d suspected it for a long time before that, but I didn’t want to give up the ritual until I stopped being a child. ‘Father Christmas’ left me the fluffy teddy bear I had seen in a toyshop and thought was absolutely beautiful – and also some lipstick and mascara.   I love the bear; even if I’m not likely to drag him around everywhere the way I did with my other cuddly toys when I was little, he’s wonderfully soft to cuddle.   I suppose my mum gave me the make-up to say, ‘There are fun things about being a teenager, too.’   But I don’t see the fun in make-up, at least when you have to be subtle about it.   It’s not like painting your face to look like a tiger or a clown.   As far as I can see from the teenage magazines in the school library, the aim of

Dear Phantom, First things first: being a teenager does not mean you turn into a monster, and your dad certainly doesn’t dislike teenagers.   Why do you think he enjoyed being a mature student, surrounded by friends less than half his age, if he doesn’t like young people?   I know you make a distinction in your mind between ‘teenagers’ and ‘students’, but most university students are teenagers, at least for their first year or two. It’s true that there are some adults who are prejudiced against teenagers, and that they don’t seem to realise that being ageist against teenagers is just as wrong as being racist or sexist or homophobic (or being ageist against old people, for that matter).   A few years after the time when you are thirteen, in the early 21 st century, I remember the newspapers gleefully reporting that someone had invented a teenager-deterrent, a buzzer that plays an unpleasant high-pitched whine that only young people can here.   They praised this invention as if te

Dear Temple Cloud, I’m about to turn thirteen, and I don’t want to.   I heard my dad say, ‘Oh, dear!   My little girl is about to be a teenager!’ and he sounded so sad, because he loves me, and now I’m about to turn into a monster that no-one can love.   My mum has a book called How to Survive Teenagers .   I don’t want to be a disaster that my family has to ‘survive’, like a nuclear war!   There’s a documentary series on television, about teenagers and their parents, called Living with the Enemy .   I don’t want to be my parents’ enemy! I don’t want to stop being a child.   Children are the only real people in the world.   In Religious Studies, we learned about how Buddhists believe there are six kinds of creature you can be reincarnated as: humans, gods, demigods, hungry ghosts, beings in hell, and animals.   Humans are the ones who stand the best chance of reaching enlightenment, because we experience both happiness (unlike the hungry ghosts and the beings in hell) and unhappine

Dear Phantom of the Library, Yes, I can see why you chose that name for yourself.   Ever since the Music teacher introduced the class to Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s version of Phantom , you identified with the Phantom – just as, when you read Frankenstein , you identified with the Monster.   Not that you’re a violent criminal whom people fear, of course, and you know you’re not particularly ugly.   But as someone who regularly gets taunted for being a weirdo and a loner, you understand how monsters feel.   In your case, instead of dropping chandeliers on people, you just haunt the school library, hidden behind a book or a magazine. Talking of magazines – you buy The Big Issue sometimes, on your way home from school, don’t you?   Even when it prints sour articles with titles like ‘The A-Z of hating Christmas’ (‘S is for Students.   Any time of year is a good time to hate students’), you accept this as no more than you deserve. I can’t remember whether The Big Issue had started its ‘Le