It was easy to sneak out late at night. The second-story bedroom window opened directly above the front door awning. After midnight, her two best guy friends pulled up a couple of houses down, and she was in the car with them in a jiffy. What was the point? Because she could; the hormonal teen drive to be rebellious for rebelliousness's sake. She wanted to make out with her boyfriend; an older thug who was up to no good. She wanted to ride around with them smoking weed and feeling free in the quiet, sleepy night.
Her mother had been out of the picture since she was little. Ever since she’d been raised by both her dad and grandmother. The guilt of the missing mother seemed to cause her guardians to overcompensate with too much leniency and trust. She was given $20-50 a week for school lunches and other toiletries a seventeen-year-old girl would need. Dollar menus and eating at friends’ homes after school meant there were always extra funds for dime or quarter bags of weed and her favorite treat, the coffee Haagen Dazs ice cream. Her father and grandmother were too naïve, so she basically ran her life the way she wanted and did as she pleased. So long as her grades were passable and she was going to graduate, no other major stipulations seemed to have been placed on her. The front porch steps made hoisting herself back up onto the awning and into her bedroom window too easy; before anyone was the wiser.
~~~
The high school was considered in ‘the hood,’ but the neighborhoods around it were stately homes in historically preserved parts of the city. Two twin brothers dressed the part of grungy derelicts with no career prospects after graduation, but they never seemed to miss school or turning in their assignments. They lived in a gorgeous, two-story Victorian house near this school. Yet even to close friends, there was a bizarre impression they lived alone; like some dead relative left them the house and they were exhibiting exceptionally mature self-sufficiency by doing their own laundry and cooking their own meals. Had anyone met their parents? Had anyone seen an adult in the house? The rooms appeared sparse in furniture, hardwood floors with no rugs, dusty and neglected. Stacks of newspapers would build up over time on the kitchen island and then suddenly disappear when a laptop would appear. The open laptop in the kitchen served as the only sign of another person’s existence in the house. Who sat here working? There was an eerie feeling of absence.
The goings-on in the house were utterly dysfunctional though. Any number of people would congregate after school and stay until the evening hours when their own parents might genuinely be concerned for them. Parties on the weekend; loud gangster rap that vibrated the walls; strawberry Boone’s Farm drunkenness; smogged-out bedrooms from bong hits; casual sex and broken-heartedness. All the underage debauchery and drug dealing imaginable. Even after a good year of this, no adult had ever been seen. It turns out the twins did have a mother. She was a flight attendant, constantly gone; in the air.
These are two anecdotes from the 90’s. Now there is TikTok and Instagram; groupthink and bot farms churning out disinformation; mass hysteria influencing gender and trans identity like a tidal wave, when the reality is the sincerity towards homosexual identity and the like is still occupied by very few. This firehose of stimuli and time spent online is a direct result of fewer real conversations at home -lack of real prodding by parents as to what their children are up to and exposed to. How many parents have checked out? The world raised me too quickly and the world is raising these younger generations even faster. How do we survive this? It seems no coincidence that a number of these kids have become the thousands and thousands of college students now wanting to kill Jews; 1/3 of which believe the negative stories about Hamas are propaganda. (a study put out by Harvard) Even during the BLM riots, I kept wondering, where are their parents? There is a complete and depressing lack of education and conversation.
To now have such a clear-eyed view of the level of hate and animosity we are walking amongst is frightening. How do you navigate this new world where rose-colored glasses cannot exist? It’s as if every day is walking a minefield. Whom to trust...
*Image is “Omega” by Rone rone.art
**I spent all of last week back in the hospital. I will now be trying a third medication. This will be a consistent infusion rather than a pill, as to bypass my digestive system. Prayers this works. I am severely underweight and this is working against me and the medicine’s capabilities too. But I can’t keep weight on if the meds aren’t working, so it’s all kind of chicken-egg circular chaos. To all the delicious, high-calorie food I’m eating, there is that :) It’s a week at a time around here; bear with me.