There are perennial Irish media stories. Is the Rose of Tralee outdated? Is the CAO too complicated? Does Christmas seem to come earlier? And, as soon as there’s a blast of good weather, reporters travel en masse to Dollymount Strand to interview delighted Dubs, their skin already turning a worryingly vivid magenta.Here’s an idea: next time we have a heatwave, or even a lengthy pause in the rain, schedule a reporter to take the Dart. It may be movement of the train, or the heat, or giddiness, or a combination of all those factors. But it seems to induce a sort of screaming insanity in a particular cohort: teenagers.Typically, the evening Dart can be half empty, with weary workers trying to stay awake on the trek home. But then a mob of teenagers can explode into the train: all of them headed for any Dublin suburb that nestles beside the sea. I have no idea what they do when they get there. They don’t seem to pack sandwiches or swimming togs. The girls are dressed in tiny shorts, the boys in their all-year T-shirt/track suit bottom combo. They are loud and boisterous and invariably carry a portable music device which thuds sounds through the carriage, startling everyone from their reveries.The music is played at high volume – sometimes to compete with the other such devices – yet the intention doesn’t seem to be to antagonise the other passengers with music. On one recent trip – during the hot spell at the end of the May – one of the teenagers even asked the train: any requests? His intention presumably being to spread the joy he was already feeling.The hero inside me immediately replied: yes! Turn it off. But my outer coward opted to move to a quieter carriage. Several others did the same.The next day the same thing happened, except on this occasion it was, unusually, a single-sex group: all boys. They had, evidently, decided to mix up the usual dress code by not wearing T-shirts. Perhaps it was the toplessness, or the heat, but they seemed unable to remain in one position. They strode up and down, bumping into each other, music thumping. All of them sucked on noxious-smelling vapes. They crackled with pubescent energy: almost as if they had managed to distil the testosterone flowing through their bodies and then snorted copious amounts of it. Perhaps to dispel some of that energy, two of them opted to have a push-up competition on the floor of the Dart carriage. They were young and healthy so it went on for some time. Regular Dart users stood around, blearily watching this display and trying to think of an appropriate adjective. When the contest ended the boys stood, sucked on their vapes and then set about practising martial arts kicks on a pole. Because you never know when a pole might come to life and attack you. The thing is: they weren’t that bad. They weren’t explicitly intimidating anyone. They acted like the other passengers didn’t exist. Or perhaps the teenage Dart madness had rendered them unaware of others, or the unwritten codes of train travel. Their worst offence was that they were annoying: in that particular way only teenagers can be. There: I said it.[ The NCT system, like most systems, favours rich peopleOpens in new window ]I suspect one of the other passengers disapproved of public athleticism so much they texted the antisocial behaviour number. Magically, two security guards appeared and without any fuss evicted the boys from the train.The boys seemed unbothered by this, agreeing among themselves that they would walk the rest of the way. Perhaps they felt they needed the exercise.As they left, I briefly locked eyes with another grown-up passenger: a look filled with puzzlement and alarm and perhaps the forlorn admission that in a few years, when these boys are adults, it might be better if AI is running the world.