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February 25, 2004

A Message to the High School Kids

Dear Adolescents of America and Elsewhere,
It gets better. Life sucks, we know-- you can't get a date or you get one too many, your friends are stabbing you in the back, you've been laughed at and called a fat dork to your face, you think you're doing something impressive and some jealous asshole shits all over you for it. You're convinced, probably, that your social status now is fixed for eternity. Well, we're here to say, balls to that. You have to take our word for it that all that crap starts to dissipate in college, and even more so afterwards. Not that there aren't shiny new problems, but the particular hell you're experiencing now is only temporary. Really, hang in there.

How do we know? We'll give you an example. As you probably know, Girl-E is a weekly regular at a certain karaoke show, the one she swears all the time is so special and unique and blah blah. While she has a bosom partner or two for this undertaking, there is a group of folk that she has become friendly with over the course of being in the same place with them at the same time every week. Last night, her regular k-buddies unavailable, Girl-E decided to go anyway, inviting the adorable and uber-talented Kat whom she'd never met to meet her there. It turned out that the regular location was under renovation, so the devoted and ever-creative host rallied the regulars to crash karaoke at another bar several miles away.

We know, we know, you wonder how this is related to the first paragraph. Just a sec. So anyway, Girl-E headed off to a strange bar, to meet a stranger, and hang out with semi-strangers. As it happened, a large proportion of the regular crew had in fact answered the call to relocate, and a wonderful time was had by all. Now the important part is to understand this group of people, and how they prove that shit gets better. We'll disregard the fact that this happens to be a multi-racial group -- we'd hate for this anomoly to mislead you into thinking that the segregation thing gets better. Anyway, this particular group of folks, drawn together only for their love of making an ass of themselves and their willingness to travel for it, is made up of representatives from every conceivable high school stratum. There are the anal, straight-A newspaper editors like Girl-E; the musically gifted and curiously bad-ass drama guy; the pair of fat girls; the rotund, four-eyes, Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt-wearing super-shy boy; the gorgeous bohemian girl; the sexy and universally-loved class clown; the non-descript semi-dorks; the so-weird-she's-totally-cool hipster; the new girl from three towns over (that's you, Kat), and the list goes on. Not only do these people hang out together every week, they just love each other to itty bits. And not because they all got Saturday detention and were stuck together for a day with nothing else to do but relate.

So the point is, adults and quasi-adults are capable of gravitating towards people for totally different reasons than you're used to, and this can, unbelievable as it sounds, make you comfortably tight with people whom, at this moment, you want to step on, blow up, or do anything to get their attention. Bad-ass drama guy doesn't care that rotund boy can't dance, and in fact he'll propose a duet. Don't despair.

Sincerely,
Leto & Roz

Posted by The Twins at February 25, 2004 12:13 PM

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Comments

that was awesome!

who would have thought that karaoke would bring so many fabulous people together!

Posted by: kat at February 25, 2004 03:14 PM

This is more evidence for my theory that blogging and karaoke have much in common. Blogging is the only space on the internet that doesn't feel overrun with the meanies from my middle school days. And I meet a fascinating cross section of humanity reading other bloggers and emailing with them sometimes. As for karaoke, well, I can't do it. I get way too anxious if I can see my audience. Hence the blogging.

All that to say, yeah it does get better. Really. Unless you try to make it in academia. Once you hit grad school, it all starts over. I got my MA and ran as fast as I could from those dweebs.

Posted by: Sue Magoo at February 25, 2004 06:32 PM

Fine, fine, fine. I'll caffeinate up and come next week, health situation permitting.

Oh...that's election day - I'm gonna be out and about all day doing pushing the marriage equality ticket...I'm gonna need some laughs.

Posted by: nikita at February 25, 2004 07:05 PM

My only karaoke two experiences thus far have been a duet with Adam Felber on Dionne Warwick's "That's what Friends are For" and another duet with my bandmate Jim on "We Built this City on Rock and Roll" (which, we discovered, ought not to be a duet.)

It is interesting how as soon as you stop caring about exposing your own flaws, you stop caring about other people's flaws as well.

Posted by: aaron at February 25, 2004 07:18 PM

i couldn't carry a tune if it had a handle on it, but i wish i was there to partake of the ambience!

Posted by: snowy at February 25, 2004 08:08 PM

That's right! It is election day! Well then I think everyone needs to come-- drinks and laughs for all.

Posted by: EV at February 25, 2004 09:27 PM