I was in my mother’s kitchen a few days ago deep in the heart of Mississippi on a trip home. As is tradition, I help her prepare dinner and clean up afterwards until she can’t take how awful my pan washing techniques are and takes over while I provide commentary. We were catching up on everything that had been going on when she suddenly remembered something she had found buried in a box of books.
“I found your journal you had to keep for your Sr English class.”
“I need it, where is it?”
Now, to preface, everyone changes quite a bit from the person they were in high school to the person they are as an adult, at least I’m glad I did. I can admit I thought I was the coolest thing that southern Mississippi public school had ever seen, with my long stupid frat hair, hemp/sea shell necklace and Clark Wallabees. Although currently I’m no pillar of modern fashion, I roll my eyes and cringe at how ridiculous I must have looked.
As I flipped through the pages of the tattered composition notebook, I felt like I was reading a stranger’s words. The only thing that confirmed this notebook belonged to me was the atrocious penmanship. I felt like Indiana Jones whenever he’s slowly, then more commandingly reading hieroglyphics to decipher an ancient message, although instead of some great civilization encoding the whereabouts of a secret treasure, it was “how sick homecoming is going to be, and “that girl is so hot.” I cringed as I read.
“What is it?”
“I can’t believe I made it this far, alive."
The journal was from my Senior English class, and each morning there would be a prompt that we were to write a response to. They were usually very generic questions and being the first class in the morning, most of my writing was practically incoherent. One of the responses I read made me laugh out loud. For your reading pleasure, I humbly present the deep thoughts of Nate Anderson at 18 years old.
The prompt:
Do you think today’s television programs and movies contain too much violence? Why? Why not?
The response:(Read in the voice of a teenager of the description above, in a tone much louder than necessary, with an idiot southern accent.) This is exactly how it is written on the page.
“Yes, like, how about that Texas Chainsaw Massacre? How about a mean dude with no face cutting people up with a friggin chainsaw? Then, if they’re not dead, he’ll take them to his little basement and chop them up more? Friggin scary, and there wasn’t even a plot, it was just a bunch of people running around screaming and cursing and crying and for the love of God, why did I pay $7.50 to go watch that? It’s Christmas! Why didn’t we go see Elf? Will Ferrel in yellow tights as an elf. That is a movie I would like to go see, because it’s funny, and I don’t think he would chase me with a chainsaw.”
Although I have come a long way since high school, I can say at least two things haven’t changed. I don’t like scary movies and I love the movie Elf.
Whether you’re with family for the holidays or just to see them, take a trip down memory lane and see where you’ve come from. Even if the your awesome and stylish Wallabees and hemp necklace didn’t give you much traction on the journey.
Fashion.
Yep, I remember you just about exactly like that. Mom
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