My High School Epiphany

The last week of your Senior Year in HS should be one of the most memorable & joyous times of your life. For me, it was an Epiphany of sadness & recognition of what faces so many kids.

My High School Epiphany

The last week of my senior year in High School was a bust. All the exams ended on Monday and for the rest of the week the teachers tried to find things for us to do, which, without saying, no one had the least bit of interest in doing. Classes were nothing more than bullshit sessions. The cool teachers participated and the stodgy ones, well, acted as they always had, pompous a******s. I’m sure the last week of school before summer break is the same throughout the United States. A sort of right-of-passage, a perennial ritual where most Seniors skip class; aspiring Seniors begin exercising their new “serfdom rights”, underclassmen rampage through the halls, profound comments are etched in yearbook pages, girls try to line up dates for the summer, guys lie saying they’ll call, saying good-bye to friends you probably will never see again, and generally releasing pent-up energy. These lazy, half-day classes found almost everyone is in good spirits. The teachers get a break from the kids: the students, ditto from the school, the college bound, thrilled about their new adventure, and the young adults, eager to strike out in their own lives �" all too sadly with their specious hopes and dreams of a dazzling and prosperous future.

For me, these blissful moments conjured very contrary feelings placing an unpleasant wedge deep into my conscious. Not everyone is joyous. Not everyone has dreams. Not everyone is happy. Not everyone can see their future or plan it. Not everyone is safe. Not everyone has clothing that fits. There are those: that go hungry, that cry themselves to sleep, that are sexually abused, are beaten and can’t afford a school lunch. This EPIPHANY dampened the festive opiate that I was experiencing. Many of these kids seek refuge at school from their plight, those whose dreams have already forsaken them. They see school as a haven of safety, a location where the world is wondrous, normal. A refuse from the daily pain they endure. They are the; underprivileged, disabled, mentally challenged, racial minorities and socially hapless. They are those of dysfunctional relationships and families, abusive province and financial deprivation. School, in the lives of these poor b******s, is almost all they have to look forward to. Thank God, a few of these social outcasts will be able to pull themselves up and enter a new world of acceptance and eventual well-being. The rest of these kids represent our future: homeless, criminals, drug addicts, drug dealers, prostitutes and exploited. Their plight is sealed by social disparity, injustice, and complacency. God, what a country of extremes! Politicians should be forced to live in the shoes of the hopeless and be rejected by their fellow man as poor and downtrodden. Maybe then things would change for the better, shortening the fissure between the extreme edges of society. Politicians, goddamn jerks!

~ Edmund

Author's Note

Shall we ignore sad truths?

Reviews

[Lea Sheryn]

I like it...particularly the last line.