Zooze the Horse roams around the pasture near Lamar State College. Zooze thinks about problems in academia. Zhe wants proffies to submit posts (blog posts, not fence posts).
I was YEARNING, ACHING, seemingly BLEEDING, almost DYING to get AWAY from an overly sheltered, isolated, limiting, intellectually stultifying domestic environment, and to GET ON with my life, someplace where someone like me would be encouraged and appreciated, and have the resources available to do it. That helicopter parenting has bred a generation of children to whom this appears completely alien, and who seem positively EAGER to RETURN HOME after college and STAY THERE, voluntarily trapped in the cradle, gives me a profoundly Toffleresque feeling of future shock. It’s worse than that, actually: it just isn’t natural for kids to want to go back HOME, into perpetual childhood.
As you can imagine, at 17 I was reading lots of Hermann Hesse and other literature, and going out with girls every chance I got.
9/11 happened my senior year. I feared I would be drafted and die in some trench in Afghanistan. College-wise, I thought I would become a high school history teacher. That didn't work out, but I'm glad I got the history degree.
I was accepted Early Decision at the college I really, really wanted to go to, and from that moment in December, through my final high-school semester and a summer as a Girl Scout camp counselor, I was just waiting to pack my bags and go to a place where everyone else thought school was as important as I did. So yeah, kind of like Frod.
I was 17 for nearly all of my freshman year at a giant party school in the Southwest. It was my first time away from home and the freedom was astonishing. I didn't do a ton of bad things, but smoked weed and rode my ten-speed around campus at 4 in the morning because it was cooler and uncrowded. I was a fantastically lousy student and ended up retaking 3 of my first semester classes, but it was the happiest I've ever been in my life.
I worked part-time, but it was at Tower Records...I mean, that was a party in the late 70s. And I fell in love countless times, even in that one year, finally with a philosophy major who was too smart to hang with a lunkhead like me.
But I wouldn't go back and do it all in 2018. I wouldn't dare. My poor freshmen are naive, frightened, sometimes abusive and obstinate. They have terrible habits and hold on to insane views that may come from their parents. I would not want to be a college student in the time of social media, not for what it would capture of my banalities or for the attention it would pull from my life.
This kid in the photo, the bombing victim. It is Friday evening, so I am drunk. But it brings tears to my eyes--perhaps more so because I am drunk. All of our bodies expire at some point, of course, but seventeen is such a young age. I was so naive at seventeen, being swept along by floodwaters. And I've made so many more mistakes since then. So, so many. It all goes by so rapidly.
I'm still overwhelmed with taking care of mom/family and working as a proffie and too-infrequently getting drunk to mitigate the exhaustion, but I continue to read every goddamn word on this blog. And thank you all, because your words help to keep me sane. I wish I had something useful to say. I'm not a god-fearing person (afaik), but every minute of this does seem like a gift.
And there are odd "realizations" I never would have had at seventeen. Such as that there came a time when life seemed to be defined by diaper-changing relationships. First, I was changing diapers for years on tiny little young people, then (and now) on old people--and next, soon enough, it will be someone else changing mine. When I was seventeen, I didn't think about diapers.
Honestly? I was thinking of running away and joining the Navy.
ReplyDeleteNot sure how well that would have worked out, but it seemed like a good plan at the time.
Working in fast food hell, which continued through my undergrad years...years.
ReplyDeleteI was YEARNING, ACHING, seemingly BLEEDING, almost DYING to get AWAY from an overly sheltered, isolated, limiting, intellectually stultifying domestic environment, and to GET ON with my life, someplace where someone like me would be encouraged and appreciated, and have the resources available to do it. That helicopter parenting has bred a generation of children to whom this appears completely alien, and who seem positively EAGER to RETURN HOME after college and STAY THERE, voluntarily trapped in the cradle, gives me a profoundly Toffleresque feeling of future shock. It’s worse than that, actually: it just isn’t natural for kids to want to go back HOME, into perpetual childhood.
ReplyDeleteAs you can imagine, at 17 I was reading lots of Hermann Hesse and other literature, and going out with girls every chance I got.
9/11 happened my senior year. I feared I would be drafted and die in some trench in Afghanistan. College-wise, I thought I would become a high school history teacher. That didn't work out, but I'm glad I got the history degree.
ReplyDeleteI was accepted Early Decision at the college I really, really wanted to go to, and from that moment in December, through my final high-school semester and a summer as a Girl Scout camp counselor, I was just waiting to pack my bags and go to a place where everyone else thought school was as important as I did. So yeah, kind of like Frod.
ReplyDeleteBeing scared and overconfident as only a 17 year old can be
ReplyDeleteI was 17 for nearly all of my freshman year at a giant party school in the Southwest. It was my first time away from home and the freedom was astonishing. I didn't do a ton of bad things, but smoked weed and rode my ten-speed around campus at 4 in the morning because it was cooler and uncrowded. I was a fantastically lousy student and ended up retaking 3 of my first semester classes, but it was the happiest I've ever been in my life.
ReplyDeleteI worked part-time, but it was at Tower Records...I mean, that was a party in the late 70s. And I fell in love countless times, even in that one year, finally with a philosophy major who was too smart to hang with a lunkhead like me.
But I wouldn't go back and do it all in 2018. I wouldn't dare. My poor freshmen are naive, frightened, sometimes abusive and obstinate. They have terrible habits and hold on to insane views that may come from their parents. I would not want to be a college student in the time of social media, not for what it would capture of my banalities or for the attention it would pull from my life.
This kid in the photo, the bombing victim. It is Friday evening, so I am drunk. But it brings tears to my eyes--perhaps more so because I am drunk. All of our bodies expire at some point, of course, but seventeen is such a young age. I was so naive at seventeen, being swept along by floodwaters. And I've made so many more mistakes since then. So, so many. It all goes by so rapidly.
ReplyDeleteI'm still overwhelmed with taking care of mom/family and working as a proffie and too-infrequently getting drunk to mitigate the exhaustion, but I continue to read every goddamn word on this blog. And thank you all, because your words help to keep me sane. I wish I had something useful to say. I'm not a god-fearing person (afaik), but every minute of this does seem like a gift.
And there are odd "realizations" I never would have had at seventeen. Such as that there came a time when life seemed to be defined by diaper-changing relationships. First, I was changing diapers for years on tiny little young people, then (and now) on old people--and next, soon enough, it will be someone else changing mine. When I was seventeen, I didn't think about diapers.
I think you DO have something useful to say, and you write better drunk than many (including me) do sober.
DeleteI lost a relative last year to Parkinson's / Alzheimer's, so I understand a (very) little of the diaper-changing.
This is always the first page I look at in the morning, and it means a lot that it exists.
{{{Bubba}}}
ReplyDelete