This World We Live In

When I walk down the infamous hallways of Excelsior Springs Middle School, I see not the smiling faces and good students calmly sauntering to classrooms and smiling at teachers. No, not here. I’ve never been able to brag that my school is a high scorer, and I’ve never been able to put my nose in sky, raise my pinky and look down on those other schools, and I’ve never had anything gourmet for lunch. Not in this place. But, I love it just the same.

You see, when I moved here, my parents didn’t move here for the all-star football teams, or even the mineral waters downtown.They moved here for the ambience, the people. This town is the epitome of little Midwestern towns. This is a place where I can look into the sky feel the cool breeze on my face and feel accepted. I’m here for a reason, its destiny.

The hallowed corridors of this academy have become my home, because nearly every memory that I can call my own take place within some reaches of the public school system. I can remember my first football game, nearly every award I’ve ever earned, were all a result of something to do with school. All of my friends, every relationship, every interview, every theory, idea I have, has been because of this place. Every aspect of my childhood has been somewhat reformed because of school, through the good and the bad. It’s almost as if I am owned by this system, as if it is an ever omniscient force, being the backbone of a young life.

Every Friday night, I would soak myself in Black and Yellow paint and cheer ‘til my throat was sore and my lips were chapped and bloody for our hometown football team, and eventually joined their ranks myself.The second I could perfect my embouchure, I joined the Tiger Pride band. Something compelled me to do this for this town, and to this day I’m trying to comprehend it. We have a Wal-Mart, a Price Chopper, a family owned Mexican restaurant and an ice cream place. It’s called Dari-B, and ice cream is free to costumed patrons on Halloween. Stories flutter down the streets of the town’s “golden years” where Harry Truman would visit and our magical mineral water could cure cancer. Eventually, I suppose cancer became immune to our springs, because the town soon “died”. If you take a few minutes out of your day to go down to the VA near Lewis Elementary, you can hear the old men in worn out army fatigues talk for what seems like a lifetime about “how it all used to be.”

I wish there was a way to tell you were in the good old days before you left them...

-Andy Bernard,

The Office

We’re the kids that get our culture from Felix Kjellberg on YouTube, from Seth Meyer’s Weekend Update, from The Doctor.You could say we’re modern. You could call us a lot of things. To me, it’s just this world we live in. This world around us, it goes to our head. I can’t turn on the TV without seeing a commercial for this week’s new iPad, or see sad news about a school shooting.It’s just become a part of the itinerary. It all starts to blend in, it all starts to become normal. School, with its bright sense of “safeness,” and the warm sense of home and the bloody tides of the world rage on around us- it all starts to run together, starts to bleed. Like a sickly watercolor, those ones we used to finger paint in Elementary school. Yeah, those were the ones. Where you weren’t quite sure what you were painting, but it just felt right to paint it. In the end, you get a B+ on it. Not quite perfect, but that’s because nobody sees it the way you did. That’s what we live in. And it looks different from every angle you see it from.

You can’t walk 10 feet here without hearing some lingo for some website or modern matter. We’ve got technology on the mind. We’re psychological cyborgs in a way. There are those who could never distinguish between Abraham Lincoln and the mailman, but would put a name on Steve Jobs in a heartbeat. Alas, I can say the same for me as well. On a Friday night, instead of being invited to parties or dances, I put on my headset lose myself in the swirling electrons. I almost lose my mind in the enthralling tails of the little green boxes in my entertainment center. I’ve been guilty of buying the latest in technology simply because it is the newest. The endless advertisement is almost used as a weapon, like a saber wielded by the rich and famous. Maybe I’m in too deep, but this is my view of the world.

It almost seems too dark. It almost seems too impossibly dark to be realistic. I’m sure we’ve all heard the stories our parents like to weave about their childhood and how different the world was then, and alas, I wish I could spin those yarns to my own children some day in the future. Unfortunately, it is a very different place. Where my parents had Vietnam and Scooby Doo, we have threats of terrorism and things on TV that children should never see. I can remember time after time when I was younger where I would sit in fear of the events around me. I remember seeing footage of 9/11 and Sandy Hook, of the Boston Bombing and the assault on Bin-Laden’s compound and it soon after became part of the background noise of my life. It’s too so-on to see how it will all affect us, but it almost certainly will.

Perhaps I’m rambling on, maybe I’ve strayed too far from my target, but I think I’ve got my message across. This world we live in is a very complex one, so beautiful, yet so dangerous. There is no metaphor great enough to describe it. This world is an amazing place.