PROJECT: HIGH SCHOOL

Huh, I don't think we're in Shermer, IL, anymore.

The dream is always the same. I primp and preen in front of the mirror until I am confident that I look just a little better than I feel. Mental checklist: VANS tennis shoes, parachute pants or faded LEVI's 501 jeans, an Ocean Pacific T-shirt or better yet an Izod or POLO shirt (depending on how good I am feeling in my dream)and a SWATCH around my wrist. I go outside my two story brick house and glide onto the bus that is waiting curbside. As I walk to the back of the bus the emergency exit opens and I am at the front doors of the highschool and I saunter through somekind of electric meter reader and I realize that not only am I the center of every teenage angst movie ever created but that I am dressed all wrong for the part. Nobody is wearing VANS, or OP's. It's like the walking into a meeting naked dream except more intense.

This is not a John Hughes movie where each group/clique signifies and stands up for a particular highschool insecurity and heartache. No this is the real deal highschool. Cruelty and all.

Today, I had to go into my daughters highschool before school. Each area of the commons were made up of the same groups from when I was in highschool, as I'm sure you remember also.

But they seem so much more confident than my generation did. We were all kind os shell shocked in highschool. Computer lab was learning a DOS program that did simple math, pagers were for doctors and drug dealers (cell phones were barely on the horizon)and yes, MTV played videos.

Who are these kids today? Then I remembered the valuable advice Mr. Hughes gave everyone in the eighties...

"You see us as you want to see us, in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out, is that each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basketcase, a princess, and a criminal. Does that answer your question?
Sincerely yours,

The Breakfast Club

I swear to God all the groups are still present and accounted for in todays highschool. I was so overwhelmed by the experience I think I started breaking into hives.