Life Contd.

I had a weird day on Friday. This whole week was confusing, actually. Whenever I wasn't half asleep in one of my classes, I was on the phone with my mother holding a miniature libra with guilt on one side and my brain supplying the counter-weight on the other. You see, I just had the whole family over at MSU last week because I got them, through my scholarship, tickets to a football game. Damn good tickets, too. Needless to say, that kind of flushed my saturday down the john. Shred my man card if you have to, but I just can't stand football. There's more camera shots of fat dudes with headphones than of tackles and passes. Also, the zebras launch those yellow flags almost automatically, as if actual action on the field triggered the response: A much needed delay for the referee to karate chop the air and earn death threats or hallelujahs from the mob in the stands. Not my kind of game at all. Anyways, I thought I sort of paid my dues by hooking them up with tickets and wrongly believed that I was free of them for at least another three weeks (I mean "free" here in the best possible way), but, as my mother pointed out during every couple hours over this week, so frequently that there are cancerous moles all over the burned, cell phone-side of my face, my siblings wanted me to see their complete marching band half-time show. Come on in, Mr. Guilt. So, I ended up letting my dad pick me up at 2 o'clock last Friday, seeing their show at 7 o'clock, and watching tv back in my dorm room at 11 o'clock. I don't think a cheese head would have driven that much to see Brett Favre immolate himself on a 50-yard line pyre. I wonder how long I can show this kind of football devotion and still rather eat the lumps of charcoal from every tailgate ever than watch a football game.

I love how classes are sort of structured, divided into zones and circles, regions, if you will, of kids. In the front, of course, sit what I like to call the hand-hefters. You know, the kids that salute the teacher with a crisp swish of the hand whenever a question mark escapes the speaker's lips, their flourishes sounding like a fleet of arrows zooming through a grass hut. Despite their enthusiasm, I can't really tell what it is they seek. They could just sit there, still, saving the burnt calories and ligament pain of their little charade, and ace the class. Correct answers are marked with a pencil, not a salute. But no, they seek something else. Maybe the speed of the gesture is just a point of pride, you know, like how it was for the gunslingers of old. Maybe they see themselves striking down queries like John Wayne striking down bandits- an epic showdown following every amnesiac, pedantic tangent of their instructors. Well, after the vigilantes in the front are the normal kids- taking notes, showing up 80% of the time, daydreaming through the fluff. After them come the solitaire players, and after them, the facebookers. I consider the facebookers a little more impudent. Solitaire is mindless, just something for the body to do to keep the pen away from the jugular, while the mind actually tries to learn, much like toe tapping or head scratching, just a tick. Facebooking, though, is an activity, and for some, a hobby. After them come the sleepers, the people who prefer a ninety-degree slump on a folded out wafer of stone to a warm bed and pillow. Last of the zones contains the crowd of true imps. The newspaper readers, the bearers of the ultimate "fuck you". The paper is like a wall that halts all of the bull shit from the podium, sound-proof, opaque, and littered with sports stats. As in the case of the sleepers, this class of student could get the same effect of their chosen behavior in the classroom by staying at home. But NO! "Fuck you"'s must be made in person. Reading a newspaper in class is saying, "I came here to show you how boring and useless your ranting is. I am consciously and deliberately ignoring you. Now stare at the front page and feel around in your pocket for booze and kleenex money for later."

When I went home to see the game, my dad said his new electric tooth brush "made his balls jiggle." I laughed pretty hard at that.

As far as the life development department, I've tried to get serious about narrowing my interests and program of study, but I just can't. The kids who have a goal, a distinct path, a ladder to adulthood, they're climbing towards a light, bright and constant, sitting calmly atop their assigned ladder. Then, there's the kids who have NOTHING to climb towards, who have consigned themselves to drudgery, crime, or laziness and dependency. They see only darkness. Then there's me. The light I see is blistering, coruscating from all directions, blinding me to the ladder and all it's rungs, as well as everything else. It's beautiful, but so bright that I'm scared to even begin on ANY ladder. I'm blinded to the rungs, making me indecisive, overly cautious, and alone, for no one else is visible above, below, or alongside me. There is only the light. Climbing towards anything is feckless. I think this metaphor fits the dilemmas of a lot of kids (Plato would agree with me). What I, what everyone in this situation, needs is someone. Someone wise, older, seasoned, pragmatic, sensible, and maybe even a little cold and calculating. We need someone who's already surmounted his ladder, someone who can throw some shades down to those of us at the bottom to help us find what truly shines, which ladder belongs to us.