I'm not young anymore?

I remember the first day I walked through the halls of the high school I now work in. It was over seven years ago, and at the time I was already in my mid-thirties. As I walked through the hallways, on my way to substitute teach for the first time, I wondered if the kids would realize I was a teacher and not a student. Yep, I thought that for a split second.

This was what I looked like at age 18

And this is the reality now, more than 25 years later.

Just like a lightening bolt it hit me, I wasn't young anymore. The problem was that I could so clearly remember what it felt like to be a teenager, to walk through the halls of Mounds View High School in New Brighton, Minnesota. It wasn't just the fact that I had little crows feet along my eyes, or that every year I seemed to injure yet a new piece of my anatomy attempting sports that were easy to do in my teens. It wasn't the fact that it took only five seconds to consume a 3000 calorie meal, and about two months to work that meal off. It went far deeper than that.

Walking through those halls, I could taste the freshness of the naivete of youth. I remember believing that my generation was the smartest, strongest and most powerful one yet. I was confident that I knew more than my parents or aunts and uncles. That my generation would change the world, make it a better place and show our silly parents and elders what it really was like to be a thoughtful, considerate and intelligent generation... Generation X.

Now I am not only an adult, but a middle-aged adult, I am that "stupid" parent, and my generation has done little to nothing to change the landscape of this earth. Politicians are still corrupt, murder and rape occur at alarming rates, wars continue to erupt around the world, there is still a threat of nuclear war, the environment is a mess, girls are still too skinny, and we still hide our anxiety in a bottle of alcohol or drugs.

It was this realization that truly broke my heart. I missed that naivete, the belief in myself and my generation that anything was truly possible. Yet, I saw this same attitude in the students whose faces I passed in the hallway. It was that day that I most wanted to become a full-time teacher and have the opportunity to help these kids figure out who they were, who they could become, and  what they could accomplish.