I wrote this post for a different blog over a year ago. I was listening to music tonight that brought back some memories from my teenage years and made me think about this post. I still don't have any answers, so I figured I might as well post this here and let the people it's about read it. I've had dumber ideas, I think.
April '00: It's pouring rain, a 16 year old boy is walking slowly down the street, dressed in black, looking at the ground. He walks to get away, where he's going doesn't matter. The rain doesn't bother him, it acts almost like his own invisibility cloak. He's listening to the latest Eminem CD, the angry words speak to him. Nobody understands him. His teachers, parents and principals, treat him like he's a bad kid. He can't remember the last time anyone's said anything positive about him. "you're failing in school, if you don't start trying harder you'll never get a job, you'll never get married". He doesn't see it that way. He doesn't skip class because he's a bad kid, he tries to sit and listen to the teachers. He seldom makes it through a class, the teachers bore him to death. So he leaves and he walks and walks, mile after mile, day after day. What's the point in sitting through boring classes, all day long, when they're not teaching anything interesting? He doesn't worry about getting a job, don't they understand that he never plans on working for someone else? He wants to learn, just not the way they want to teach him. He does worry about getting married, if the only way to get married is to be like his classmates...no thanks.
He looks at his peers with contempt, how fake they all are. They follow the rules, they kiss up to the popular kids, they treat anyone who's different with the cruelty only a teenager is capable of. He knows he'll never fit in with them and he doesn't want to. He stopped caring what they thought long ago. The majority of them will live utterly unimpressive lives, they'll finish school, get jobs, get married and do the same thing every day forever. How could they want him to be like that? Don't they realize he wants to do more with his life? If being different than his peers makes him bad, he's ok with being bad. So, he walks all by himself, resigned to his fate.
That was me 14 years ago. I didn't turn out how they said, nor did I turn out as I planned. I look at my life today, I work for myself (albeit with several billion dollars less than I hoped to have by now), I'm married to the best wife I could imagine and we have the best little baby boy in the world (factually speaking, of course. Oh btw, did I forgot to mention that we had a baby recently :)) (In case you weren't paying attention, I wrote this last year, we did not just have another baby). Granted my life isn't nearly as exciting as I planned (changing diapers and cleaning spit up, isn't quite as glamorous as the jet setting life I dreamed of), but my life is rewarding, satisfying and I'm happy with where I am today. I have no idea how I got here, certainly I had some help, but I could've easily gone the other direction and messed up my life (I've seen it happen all too often). I still bear the scars from those unhappy years, but they fade with time and don't have much affect on my life now. I could forget all the hurt they caused and despair I went through, when I believed what they said about me. But...
Now I drive down the street, I pass by a kid walking aimlessly, wearing a hoodie, listening to music ($50 says there's at least a few of the same Eminem songs I listened to in his playlist). He's my 14 year old brother. I see him getting into all the trouble I got into at that age. I should understand it, I should know what to say to him to make it better, but I don't. I get angry at him, the same way everyone got angry at me. I get frustrated watching him make all the mistakes I made. I've been through it all before and I still have no idea how to help him and I feel like a total hypocrite.
