You Can't Stop Us on the Road to Freedom

"Tupelo Honey," Van Morrison

This week, we started reading The Catcher in the Rye in my junior English class. Catcher was arguably my favorite book in high school-- at least, until I read A Prayer for Owen Meany at the end of senior year, and decidedly understood what Holden Caulfield means when he says: "What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wished the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it." Drained by Hawthorne's beautiful but drawn-out prose and relatively unfazed by the antics of Abigail Williams, I not only identified with Holden Caulfield, but clung to Salinger's easier diction and tell-it-like-it-is style. Teaching the novel today, I am still endearingly attached to Holden, but nowadays it's more because I see him in the movements and complaints and shiftiness of my students. Perhaps because I myself am grown growing up, Holden's once-amusing sarcasm and negativity is instead a little more aggravating; his sense of entitlement and unfounded arrogance is a little more tedious. At the same time, however, I sense myself agreeing with him on quite a few valid (albeit trite) observations: People do tend to repeat themselves for effect, even if you've acknowledged their statement the first time. And, if you think about it, most of the time "good luck" really is an insincere and insignificant phrase, used only to maintain social niceties and end a conversation. At 27, I find myself torn between empathy and annoyance at this lost and frustrated 17-year-old, and when I think about where I am in my own life, that's not surprising.

Perhaps because I still need help with TurboTax, I still eat box macaroni and cheese for dinner approximately once and a week, and I still consider Blue Moon to be the "expensive" beer, sometimes I feel like I'm not a real grown up yet. Sometimes I still get "trapped" in Disney channel shows. Sometimes I like Justin Beiber's latest radio hit. Sometimes I want to shop at Forever 21 and wear blue nail polish. But then the (outrageous?!) Verizon bill arrives, and suddenly Bailey needs $400 of work at the vet, and we're out of laundry detergent and paper towels, and I am reminded of the fact I am most certainly an Adult. With Responsibilities. And Deadlines. And Consequences.

Really, though, I think it's a pretty normal feeling for where I am in my life. And rather than being irritated by this occupancy space of "in-between," I prefer to consider myself floating contentedly between two different and necessary worlds. I like that I don't feel the need to rush into an adulthood of fancy dinners and 3-inch heels and operas. I like that, while I do know how the "wine-flight" menu at most restaurants works, I may just as well be sneaking a 40 into a movie theater or having a dance party in my living room to Young Money and Jay-Z. I like that my apartment smells of peanut butter and wetsuits, and that sometimes my go-to cure for a bad day is still Red Grammar's "Teaching Peace" and chocolate milk.

On Monday, before we began the first chapter of Catcher, I gave my students the journal prompt: "True or False: Adults just don't understand teenagers." One of my students (respectfully) asked: "What do you count as?" And while the defensive, I-need-to-remain-the-Authority-Figure part of me told him I'm an adult, there was a big part of me that inwardly smiled at the question. Especially after he continued with, "No, I know. I didn't mean that to be mean. I guess I just...I mean...you do get us. And most adults don't. At least, you get us sometimes. Right?"

Right. Well, at least in some ways. Because there is still a part of ME that adults just don't understand. My husband, too, for that matter:

To some, I might currently be living my life in a gray area between Aimless Post-Graduate and Responsible Parent, but I don't feel that's the case. Maybe I'm hovering at the edge of adulthood; many days thrust forward into Unknown Territory and Life-Changing Decisions, and other times occasionally spun backwards into Childhood Pranks and Adolescent Unawareness. In any case, I'm aware of life's terrific expanse of possibility and promise, anger and shame, hope and deceit. I'll continue to impress information, share life experiences, and tell jokes to my students, hoping to influence and intervene, empower and empathize. But above all of the labels and expectations and worries and uncertainties, I know I'm enjoying this ride. So I'll keep on keeping on, both by listening to advice from the likes of Charles Bukowski:

one learns to endure because not to endure

turns the world over to them

and they are less than 

zero.

And also Rebelution: 

"Well it's a struggle-- everyday we're stressin'

but what's a life without dedication?"

After all, I learned from some of the best:

My mom and her sisters; October 2009