Stone Life

Working in a high school is filled with a variety or untold strangenesses (like that word?.....I'm an English teacher and can't manage to use the language with any expertise this morning)....very vague statement, I know....I'm lazy - perhaps the most disturbing of daily mind-events/journeys is the stroll, no, make that: violent dragging, through the muck of one's own adolescence. For one who could not wait until high school ended, longing basically everyday to stop what I realized even then was some sort of strange petri-dish-filled-with-combustibles social-experiment that, although all must endure it, and there should be some sort of unification in shared experience, turns out to be shared isolation on an island surrounded by a the sea of hormones and budding, awkward adulthood, the idea of spending everyday back in high school is tantamount to God kicking-back in his golden easy-chair and enjoying the show in the same manner one cracks open a beer and watches the train-wreck that is the delusional teens being skewered on American Idol. - it must be fun.

Reflecting on my unique position of going back to high school as an adult, I reflected last night on what, other than a widening age-gap, truly separates me from the previous me that was indeed no different than these youths that I am currently instructing. In most ways, the jump from childhood to authority-figure, it makes me chuckle to even say such a thing to categorize myself, has been seamless - I do not feel terribly different, but I pinpointed something particular to my adult experience that is a drastic departure from the angst-ridden-pseudo-rebel I played on the television drama of my teens: numbness.

I am not sure if it is the chemical makeup of a maturing body/mind that accounts for it, or the lack of responsibility (I used to hate when adults told me, "You think you have stuff to worry about now, but just wait....") that does not bog the teen mind down with the mundane peculiarities of human existence, but there was decidedly more passion ten-years ago than there is today. Every idea was going to change the world, love was urgent, feelings/emotions were paramount - now their just tiring. It is rational, reasonable to take into account consequences in your actions, that things maybe can wait until tomorrow, that an argument with your love interest does not begin or end the world, and that, no, you are not the most important entity in the universe, but the young mind is oblivious to such things. It is the cosmic joke to end all jokes that when you are most motivated and easily captured by an idea, you are in the least likeliest position to achieve objectives of your entire life, and by the time freedom and independence find you, you will become another stagnant member of the machine that is adulthood and no longer feel compelled to do those things for which you might have held so much passion for previously.

These kids are like caged animals at the zoo; they know not that they are being observed, nor do they care if they are cognizant of being on display for we onlookers; their oblivion and overall feeling of self-importance makes them the perfect specimens for glimpsing our previous selves. Like a movie screen, where actors do not take the audience into account, choosing rather to play parts knowing all the while that they will be viewed eventually, one is allowed to lose oneself in the unfolding lives of those one has no more connection with than any other stranger, but somehow you cannot help seeing something, feeling something long forgotten. Too much time in this vortex of past emotion is probably damaging to one's mental health, leading perhaps to insanity or, worse yet, novel-writing, but for momentary glimpses it is an experience worth your thought-life.