Kids Are Not All Right.

I'm not sure why, but the town where I work was flooded with hordes of unsupervised high school children on Wednesday. As I drove from my office in to town for lunch, about two or three miles, there were increasing groups roaming the streets. By the time I got from a shore area to a more commercial region, I might as well have been driving through the hallway of a school. As one group of giggling girls ran across the street looking for oncoming traffic in only one direction and I stopped short to avoid hitting them, I wondered if I wasn't driving indoors.

My favorite pizza place was even worse. I walked in the back entrance, past rows and rows of tables shoved together and kids chattering. A few narrowed their eyes as I walked past. I felt like I was back in school, navigating a treacherous cafeteria of unwelcome faces. As “I don't like the look of those teenagers” bounced around my brain, I wondered when a 33-year-old became Grampa Simpson.

After I ordered, I spotted one of the few adults in the place vacate a small table, and I quickly put my jacket on the chair to reserve it. The chatter was deafening, a mix of goofy cracking laughs and high pitched squeals. There were few breaths taken, and it sounded like a John Moschitta, Jr. convention. The selection of pies was depleted and the pizza guy seemed weary, but there was a ravioli slice with my name on it, something I hadn't tried before. Soon I was in cheese heaven as my ears began to sift through the ruckus.

“She's strange; I don't like her!” said one lanky Shia LaBeouf circa Holes lookalike. “She's just weird.”

“She's NOT that bad!” insisted one of the girls at the table, the sincerity of her defense betrayed by the laughter in her voice. In one breath she was defending an outcast and validating the boy's “funny” commentary.

“That isn't right,” he said, “There should not be such a thing as ‘not that bad'.” Who is he to decide, this authority all of fourteen or fifteen? In his life experience, he'd assessed that people either fit in to what the majority deemed acceptable, or they didn't, with no shades of gray? I understand cliques, and could clearly see the different groups defined by the miniature mobs huddled together on the streets. I remember how kids think, how they create divisions and seek safety in whichever group they find shelter in. What struck me about the comment was the certainty and sureness of it. I don't ever remember feeling like I knew everything, not academically and certainly not about personalities and how we relate to each other as human beings. I don't feel certain about things now let alone fifteen years ago. These kids were confident in every statement, even the ones I knew to be wrong, and hoped they'd realize as they got older.

Finishing my meal, I made my way toward the exit. A few kids were balancing on a railing and didn't move or acknowledge when I said “excuse me” and pushed past. The further I got from the place, the smaller the crowds got, and the street where I'd parked was actually empty. When I drove back out on to the main street, some of the kids from the pizza place were on the sidewalk standing around a bigger kid. He was young, but with a slightly receding hairline and a beard with no mustache. I didn't figure him for a high school kid unless he'd been left back once or twice, and the way he kept looking over his shoulder and kept his hands in his jacket, the words “drug dealer” popped in to my head. I wondered when I became my parents, and when their fears about sending me to public high school suddenly made sense.

Back at the office, I overheard someone asking his supervisor the same question that had been on my mind, if there was some kind of school holiday. He didn't think so, but pointed out that his daughter's high school has thousands of students and the freedom to leave the grounds during a free period or on their lunch break. It was warm, but not a particularly nice day, but it did seem like the entire population of the local high school had erupted like locusts across four miles. My high school had an enclosed courtyard. It was a nice courtyard, with a fish pond and brickwork and plants, but we were surrounded by walls on four sides and couldn't get in that much trouble. At the time, it felt like prison, albeit one where all the inmates wore jackets and ties. Now these kids all look so young to me, too young to be roaming the world without parents or teachers around.

Hopefully it was a fluke, maybe a half day or a bomb scare or something election-related, even though voting was done on Tuesday. I've had lunch at the same time in the same vicinity before over the last five months, on warmer, sunnier days, and I haven't encountered one-sixteenth as many hooligans. I'd hate to start bringing lunch to the office; I need a sanity break, even if it's just half an hour. The larger question is why it bothered me, aside from the sheer volume, easily hundreds of kids. Is it because of the upbringing I had, or where I fell when I was in that social hierarchy? I didn't like the wealthy, privileged, popular, athletic, and loud crowd then; why would I feel comfortable among them now? Or is it a sign of aging, that the loud quick chatter is almost a foreign language to me now, fearsome cries of restless natives? I don't think I could do what teachers do, not with that many wild kids. I'd be outnumbered with a class of twenty students. Perhaps the teachers were getting their sanity break while the 300 teenagers were unleashed.

Am I wrong? Should recess be restricted to a cafeteria and a playground and field with a fence? Isn't a long leash better than no leash at all? If high school kids are enjoying the freedom most of us didn't have until college, what consequences are there for society and the future? I guess I am getting old, but I'm kind of glad I never have to go back to that world.