Several things brought memories of high school into my brain recently. I just finished Promise Me, a novel by Harlan Coben. Dave and I've read many of his quick reads - mystery/murder types but we like the characters.
Complex story, this one, but early on the main character overhears two high school girls talking about not wanting to ride home with a friend who had too much to drink. He's connected to them in the story line, so simply gives each of them his business card and says to call him if they ever need a ride, anytime, anywhere, no questions asked. And he will not say anything to their parents. And the story evolves.
The author continues, "It doesn't matter who you are - the teenage years are hard. High school is a war zone. Myron (the narrator and main character) had been a popular kid. He was a Parade All-American basketball player, one of the top recruits in the country, and, to trot out a favorite cliche, a true scholar-athlete. If anyone should have had it easy in high school, it would be someone like Myron Bolitar. But he hadn't. In the end, no one gets out of those years unscathed. You just need to survive adolescence. That's all. Just get through it."
I read that paragraph at the start of the novel and 1960-1964 flashed back into my memory. My big high school with 4,000 students. A good school in a very nice up-scale Chicago suburb but full of the typical "groups". You belonged, or you didn't. I was shy and unsure of myself and although academically I always did well, I often felt lost and really, really did not enjoy my high school years. I thank my small circle of good friends, and my slot on the high school yearbook staff - those people and that one after-school activity "saved" me.
I went on to choose a very small college (900 students)….grew into myself, found a wonderful and lasting set of friends and my future husband and loved every minute of my four years there. (Well, maybe not every minute!)
So finishing the novel, and then hearing on yesterday's news about another 14-year-old with a gun in West Virginia. He held a teacher and her students hostage for part of the day. It just made me so sad. A young boy who obviously, for whatever reasons, was in real trouble - and he thought he could solve his unhappiness by bringing a gun to school. Thankfully the teacher and others were able to convince him that he had options and so it was a much better ending than it might have been.
In our little family we have two high school age grandsons - one a senior, and apparently he's "conquered" his high school, and another entering the same school as a freshman who I think will also do well. Two other much younger grandsons are marching along toward high school….but it will be awhile until they get there.
No doubt some of their experiences will be very good and some not-so-good. But I just hope they can wait it out….looking back so many years later you realize that those four years flash by, and actually mean very little in the bigger scheme of life. But when you're there….at that high school, the midst of teenage angst….it really can feel like a "war zone".
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