He said an interesting thing in passing, and he probably had no idea that I'd seize upon that stray comment, so don't blame him for this rant.
Ok. So he and his friend were talking to the senator being elected (Sorum.) and mentioned that he was pretty cool – a stand up guy – but also mentioned that he (Sorum) didn’t really pay all that much attention to a “couple of kids” until he realized that they were in charge of 2000 votes. That is - until he figured out they had actual power and influence upon his position.
And okay. I get the popular preconception of the teenage years being stupid and hormonal and not political, but come on. I’m nineteen. I’m in TPS (Ten Percent Society), FUND (Freethinkers of UND), Honors, VP of CrWC (Creative Writing Club) , SPILL (Supporting Peers in Laidback Listening), volunteering to help with an engineering outreach program next week, and I’m working with the Nonprofit Group on campus. I play D&D and read Howard Zinn and Genome for fun. I’ve been quoted in our newspaper twice – once on CrWC, once on the Interfaith Fair. I wrote a letter to the editor when I was twelve, asking for a horoscope designed for kids. I know self defense, I write - a lot, and I have a job offer from the multicultural center here. I’m undecided, yeah, but I know damn near every building on this campus, which lunch room’s the best for food (Terrace), seating (squires), quick (MarketPlace), and always open (Wilkerson). I’m a voter. I’m eligible to join the military. I critique my friends’ papers and stories, and I’m almost always available to give advice. I pay taxes. I am, for all intents and purposes, an adult, and so are most of my friends. You want to know the best thing about coming to college? It was the fact that, for once, my professors actually wanted to hear me talk. They wanted to hear me think.
College is the first place where I have realized that some of the things I’m saying are something new and might be right. College is the first place where I have realized that some of the things I’m doing are right.
Experience shouldn’t count for so damn much unless you constantly use that experience. I’m probably not going to argue with Hawking about Physics, or King about writing horror. But I know that I know more about certain ideas than some of my older colleagues, and I will not back down from them just because they have been alive longer than I have.
Once upon a time, length of life used to mean that you were more evolved – better at survival, and not getting killed. But that was before medical advances and technology and better hygiene. In 21st century America, being older than someone else means that either your genes haven’t yet missed something important while self-replicating, or your doctor is good.
This is a serious problem in America, where kids are killing themselves because it’s the only way to get people to listen. When did teen suicide become the new way of expressing yourself? It took two years and nine teen suicides for Bachmann’s home district to lift the “No Homo Promo” Policy. Nine.
We are killing our future.
Once upon a time, length of life used to mean that you were more evolved – better at survival, and not getting killed. But that was before medical advances and technology and better hygiene. In 21st century America, being older than someone else means that either your genes haven’t yet missed something important while self-replicating, or your doctor is good.
This is a serious problem in America, where kids are killing themselves because it’s the only way to get people to listen. When did teen suicide become the new way of expressing yourself? It took two years and nine teen suicides for Bachmann’s home district to lift the “No Homo Promo” Policy. Nine.
We are killing our future.
Kids are smarter than you think, but they believe adults. What you tell them impacts their beliefs, their choices, their future. And when you tell them that the only way for them to get your attention is by killing themselves, they will listen to you very well.
I don’t have a solid solution. I hope someone comes up with one soon. But I think it’s pretty clear that we need one soon. The issue isn’t so small as LGBT bullying, or the religious diehards at my school who think it's funny to write that the Freethinker group here is going to hell. And yeah, that ticks me off. But these are symptoms of a larger problem.
The issue is the fact that no one is listening to the kids. “A penny for my thoughts, oh no, I'll sell 'em for a dollar/They're worth so much more after I'm a goner/And maybe then you'll hear the words I been singin'/Funny when you're dead how people start listenin'” goes the song – and it’s true. It has become a case of too little, too late – especially for the nine casualties of the “No Homo Promo” policy.
We need to stop using children as our weapons in a war of miscommunications and bad policy.
You need to respect kids.
Because we're more powerful than you think. And once we realize that, we won't be the future.
We'll be the present.
I don’t have a solid solution. I hope someone comes up with one soon. But I think it’s pretty clear that we need one soon. The issue isn’t so small as LGBT bullying, or the religious diehards at my school who think it's funny to write that the Freethinker group here is going to hell. And yeah, that ticks me off. But these are symptoms of a larger problem.
The issue is the fact that no one is listening to the kids. “A penny for my thoughts, oh no, I'll sell 'em for a dollar/They're worth so much more after I'm a goner/And maybe then you'll hear the words I been singin'/Funny when you're dead how people start listenin'” goes the song – and it’s true. It has become a case of too little, too late – especially for the nine casualties of the “No Homo Promo” policy.
We need to stop using children as our weapons in a war of miscommunications and bad policy.
You need to respect kids.
Because we're more powerful than you think. And once we realize that, we won't be the future.
We'll be the present.
