I'm Gonna Lie
The lyrics linked below neatly sum up a dilemma many of my peers face today. I think we all hope our kids will hold our character in such high regard that the questions posed here wouldn't even occur to them. If only. My folks deflected any attempts to bring them down to my level with a polite, "That's none of your business," and to this day I believe they were too nerdy to have had much to tell (but I hope I'm wrong!) Undoubtedly my kids will believe the same of me, which is just fine.
It's tempting to reflect on what the honest answers might have been, though. Given the popular hysteria over teens' nihilistic behavior - a hysteria which renews itself with every generation that society has been well off enough to have leisure time - it seems a miracle that so many of us survive to see our 30s. The fact that most of us do survive lead me to believe that this recklessness is something normal: Something we must do to test our boundaries, our moral grounding, our physical limits, beyond the rote behavior of children fearing punishment. Middle class kids like me, blessed with plenty, aren't forced to our limits in order to eke out a living and become self-sufficient. Instead we - well, I anyway - invent other tests for ourselves lest we remain perpetual adolescents nursing first on our parents and later on the public teat. Is this a good thing? I don't think so. Is it a necessary thing? I think so. Honestly, dropping out of school at 16 and getting a full-time job (two part-time jobs, actually) was the best thing I could have done to find out what I was really made of, how far I was willing to go to get by.
It must be the right thing to tell our kids the truth, followed by "the rest of the story?" i.e., Rehab', death, jail, rape and the other traps that caught those of us who didn't make it through the gauntlet of teen rites of passage. Only so far as you have the experience to back it up though. Kids smell poser at 1ml parts per 1000 gallons. I try to be honest with my young friends - without volunteering anything beyond the issue at hand - and I expect Ed Hamell will be honest with his as well . . . but when that first question comes, "Andrea, were you ever high behind the wheel of a car?" Hamell anticipates that moment of panic when our first instinct is to lie lie lie lie lie. And try not to laugh.
Inquiring Minds by Ed Hammel (Hamell on Trial)
It's tempting to reflect on what the honest answers might have been, though. Given the popular hysteria over teens' nihilistic behavior - a hysteria which renews itself with every generation that society has been well off enough to have leisure time - it seems a miracle that so many of us survive to see our 30s. The fact that most of us do survive lead me to believe that this recklessness is something normal: Something we must do to test our boundaries, our moral grounding, our physical limits, beyond the rote behavior of children fearing punishment. Middle class kids like me, blessed with plenty, aren't forced to our limits in order to eke out a living and become self-sufficient. Instead we - well, I anyway - invent other tests for ourselves lest we remain perpetual adolescents nursing first on our parents and later on the public teat. Is this a good thing? I don't think so. Is it a necessary thing? I think so. Honestly, dropping out of school at 16 and getting a full-time job (two part-time jobs, actually) was the best thing I could have done to find out what I was really made of, how far I was willing to go to get by.
It must be the right thing to tell our kids the truth, followed by "the rest of the story?" i.e., Rehab', death, jail, rape and the other traps that caught those of us who didn't make it through the gauntlet of teen rites of passage. Only so far as you have the experience to back it up though. Kids smell poser at 1ml parts per 1000 gallons. I try to be honest with my young friends - without volunteering anything beyond the issue at hand - and I expect Ed Hamell will be honest with his as well . . . but when that first question comes, "Andrea, were you ever high behind the wheel of a car?" Hamell anticipates that moment of panic when our first instinct is to lie lie lie lie lie. And try not to laugh.
Inquiring Minds by Ed Hammel (Hamell on Trial)
posted by EggOfTheDead at 11:25 AM
1 Comments:
The feeling is familiar, although I'm sure my boys would think my stories were tame if I told them all.
heh...
And thanks for the support!
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