An afternoon rewind
Okay, so you may be thinking...huh? But hang in there and have a good laugh with me.
I take my mother to the mall in the afternoons for exercise and maybe just a bit of shopping should the need arise. The need arose this past Monday afternoon. Our biggest gripe on our walks is the teenagers that crowd the place when school gets out. They are so loud and obnoxious. And the way some of them dress... I called mom to see if she wanted to come along, knowing all the while she would. I looked at the clock and said I would pick her up at 3pm. I thought to myself, "Great. School's out and the place will be crowded with all of the silly-acting teenagers. Oh well, I'm not going to let that stop me." So I picked up mom and off we went.
I still had that thought in the back off my mind which is like the back burner of a stove, simmering to a low boil at whatever the annoyance is at the moment. As we approached the Food Court, sure enough, regular as clockwork, the place was crawling with high schoolers. Loud, obnoxious. "I'm glad we didn't act like that when I was in high school," I thought and almost said aloud. And I paused to ponder that cliche.
Flashback to the Class of 1972, Valdosta High School. Hmmm. We didn't have any malls to hang out at after school; we went straight home or to an after-school activity or job, I'm sure. Hmmm. Or did we? I pushed the rewind button to 3:15 p.m.
Ringgggg! School's out. My class was the last class to graduate from the old VHS on Williams St. built in the 1950s. A beautiful red brick, three story building complete with hard wood floors, no air conditioning, exterior fire escapes which I hated because the boys would hang around underneath to look up the girls' skirts. Back then, girls wore dresses; no pants, jeans forbidden. The cool thing to do right after school let out was to go to Brookwood Plaza directly behind the school. That was our mall. We piled into Barnes Drugstore for a Coke. Not just any Coke but the old fashioned, soda jerk, fountain dispensed, Coke with cherry or vanilla flavoring if that was your thing. Mine was a Cherry Coke. They tasted better back then than they do now, but I digress. So picture a store infinitely smaller than the present day Food court jammed with high schoolers. The cool kids had their reserved booths and the counter had a limited number of stools, so the rest of us wanna-bees mingled, got our Cokes, hoping see and be seen and when the push of humanity was too much to bear, we went outside to wait on our rides to pick us up to go home.
Yes, we were just as obnoxious and just as loud. I'll be the older folks dreaded being caught in that milieu then as I did now. But note that I said that in past tense because along the way on that trip down memory lane, my thoughts changed. It was a special time in my life just like it is for these kids. I've had my go at it and it's their turn now. I don't begrudge them the robust revelry anymore. I just walk by smiling with a distant gaze in my eyes as I drift back in time to when I was their age and doing just exactly the same thing.
I take my mother to the mall in the afternoons for exercise and maybe just a bit of shopping should the need arise. The need arose this past Monday afternoon. Our biggest gripe on our walks is the teenagers that crowd the place when school gets out. They are so loud and obnoxious. And the way some of them dress... I called mom to see if she wanted to come along, knowing all the while she would. I looked at the clock and said I would pick her up at 3pm. I thought to myself, "Great. School's out and the place will be crowded with all of the silly-acting teenagers. Oh well, I'm not going to let that stop me." So I picked up mom and off we went.
I still had that thought in the back off my mind which is like the back burner of a stove, simmering to a low boil at whatever the annoyance is at the moment. As we approached the Food Court, sure enough, regular as clockwork, the place was crawling with high schoolers. Loud, obnoxious. "I'm glad we didn't act like that when I was in high school," I thought and almost said aloud. And I paused to ponder that cliche.
Flashback to the Class of 1972, Valdosta High School. Hmmm. We didn't have any malls to hang out at after school; we went straight home or to an after-school activity or job, I'm sure. Hmmm. Or did we? I pushed the rewind button to 3:15 p.m.
Ringgggg! School's out. My class was the last class to graduate from the old VHS on Williams St. built in the 1950s. A beautiful red brick, three story building complete with hard wood floors, no air conditioning, exterior fire escapes which I hated because the boys would hang around underneath to look up the girls' skirts. Back then, girls wore dresses; no pants, jeans forbidden. The cool thing to do right after school let out was to go to Brookwood Plaza directly behind the school. That was our mall. We piled into Barnes Drugstore for a Coke. Not just any Coke but the old fashioned, soda jerk, fountain dispensed, Coke with cherry or vanilla flavoring if that was your thing. Mine was a Cherry Coke. They tasted better back then than they do now, but I digress. So picture a store infinitely smaller than the present day Food court jammed with high schoolers. The cool kids had their reserved booths and the counter had a limited number of stools, so the rest of us wanna-bees mingled, got our Cokes, hoping see and be seen and when the push of humanity was too much to bear, we went outside to wait on our rides to pick us up to go home.
Yes, we were just as obnoxious and just as loud. I'll be the older folks dreaded being caught in that milieu then as I did now. But note that I said that in past tense because along the way on that trip down memory lane, my thoughts changed. It was a special time in my life just like it is for these kids. I've had my go at it and it's their turn now. I don't begrudge them the robust revelry anymore. I just walk by smiling with a distant gaze in my eyes as I drift back in time to when I was their age and doing just exactly the same thing.
posted by Buttercup at
6:37 PM
2 Comments:
Strange how we can fluctuate between understanding a situation and having it annoy the mess out of us, isn't it? And as much as we want to understand sometimes, or even do, there will be days those situations of other people's revelry will still aggravate us to no end. But I guess if we ALL understood each other, we'd have a lot less to write about! I go through the same thing with my middle schoolers on a weekly basis. One minute I love that simple things amuse them, the next I'm telling them to grow up. Maybe I'm a little bitter that I don't always have the time to laugh at the things they do...or maybe they're just annoying! I reserve the right to fluctuate!
By
blindsi, at 7:24 PM
Nice. Again. So what is it about your writing that you pull up cool memories and memorable phrases when you're tired, frustrated, etc.? Strong emotions evoke wonderful writing in you, I think.
I also think that we're all guilty of mis-remembering our past, seeing our past as lovelier, more carefree and seeing ourselves in the past as more moral, better behaved than we actually were. It's like when college students reminisce about high school, about how easy it was compared to college, about how they had it made there. That may be true, but they often forget about the power plays, the cliques, the drama of high school because those issues seem silly now that they have some distance on it.
Gosh, I slipped into lecture mode quite easily. Sorry about that. I'm not sure how that happened. I guess five minutes ago I thought I was wiser than I really was. (Hmm, I was trying to poke fun at myself for mis-remembering the last five minutes, but that didn't work too well.) Oh well, I'll try again another day.
By
Donna Sewell, at 7:26 PM
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