As I was raking leaves with my daughter this past autumn Saturday, a group of high school kids in all their glory passed by , jostling , joking and strutting. They seemed so carefree that I felt like dropping the rake and all my responsibilities and just tagging along. Well I didn’t. What I did was ask my 10th Grade daughter if she knew the kids? She said with a clear smirk she did and they were freshman. She went on to lambast them and say no one liked the freshmen , that they were wimps of some sort (it was getting cool outside and related to the cold). We got into it a little more and I asked her if she and her friends fraternized with them and she said “no way”. When I asked what she and her friends did when they came and sat on the same table in the cafeteria she said “we ignore them!”
Anyway, I just loved it. Though I am was not a girl it did bring some memories back from my own high school years. Mind you , I would and never did have the kind of attitude my daughter expressed as I would think it better to have a lively cafeteria table then a group of siloed cliques. Nevertheless there was just something raw about the whole thing and was wondering if I could bring the same approach to the work place. Well I am only kidding or day dreaming of course but that attitude if I don’t like you I am not going to deal with you even if you are in my face was something I had not thought about in a long time.
It has a certain power and finding something so trivial to differentiate as being in 9th or 10th grades
has a certain wonder to me as I contemplate the mind of a high schooler.
