Thursday, 20 November 2008
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Les Miserables (1985 Original London Cast)
By Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schonberg, Patti LuPone, Rebecca Caine, Colm Wilkinson, Frances Ruffelle
Who Am I?
see relatedAll I'm sayiiiiing... is give teens a chaaaaance....
I'm white, lower-middle class, and a teenager with an overbearing mom. I didn't know what a gay person was until seventh grade [my best friend confided "Yeah, so I'm lesbian" to which I replied, "Oh, cool. Do you go to that new temple they opened up by Subway, or the older one by the park?"]. I suppose I might have had some sort of idea, being the young tomboy that I was and often accused of being "one of those dykes" by my mom. I wasn't too clear why my mom was calling me a wall used to keep back the sea, but gosh darn it, I didn't want to be one! What if I got to high school and all of the kids made fun of me for being a wall?
Abortion wasn't really an issue I became truly aware of until the end of ninth grade, and neither was rape, genocide, infanticide, or any of those other fun -cides [I was aware of suicide, because I had friends with unfortunately close experience to that] I didn't really watch the news, read the newspapers, or look things up on the internet.
It's kind of sickening, how easily it is for Americans to become wrapped in a shroud of ignorance. Yes, I allow a certain leeway towards those in their early teens, but I was faced with friends whose parents had the same unknowing that we did. That's not acceptable. That's purposefully facing a corner so the outside world becomes background noise.
Once I did start forming opinions, I was faced with my own indecision: I didn't want to form opinions that would offend people. If they attacked me for my opinion, I wouldn't be able to back myself up; either I was inexperienced on the subject, or I'd forget everything I knew about it.
However, it was boring to remain so middleground all the time, and I found myself being attacked for trying to remain neutral, so might as well be ridiculed for a reason.
Something that bothers me the most is being ridiculed by adults. Yes, I know not everyone's going to agree with me. Yes, I respects adults' opinions, as they [usually] have more experience with the subject than I do. What makes some adults think teenagers don't deserve respect? I have taken the time to actually think about this and try to present my views in a mature manner. To what purpose does it serve, passively-aggressively putting words in my mouth?
The instance of this that infuriates me the most is my sophomore biology teacher. This wasn't a class I was too forthright in supplying my opinion, since I didn't like the teacher or half of my classmates, but we were talking about flu shots and I had a valid question.
Why don't they give the shots to babies first, and then what's left over to the elderly? Both are highly susceptible, but babies haven't had nearly the same life oppurtunities as the elderly. It seems practical to me, even though it is a tough thing to decide.
His response? "Well, most of us aren't as much of a realist as you are. We would prefer to keep our beloved grandparents and other relatives around as long as we have them, because we care for them."
One: when did a realist become a bad thing? Two: what gave any kind of indication that I somehow care about my family less because I would prefer to give a chance to someone that's only lived eight months instead of eighty years? Of course I would be upset if my grandma died, but she would rather the shot she would've received go to an infant.
It wasn't the different point of view that angered me so much as the way he said it. As you can tell, since I'm still mad about it more than half a year later.
A friend of mine, who's less sheltered than I [and a private religious school kid, to boot], wrote in to the local newspaper. I don't know what specific topic it was on, something about the high school curriculum. She got a ton of angry responses, calling her stupid, unthinking, impractical, so on and so forth. Once it was revealed she was in high school? Responses stopped altogether.
So it's alright to disagree with an adult [although unintelligently and rudely], but once it gets down to teenagers, all contact is forbidden? Because it's unthinkable that she wanted to perhaps discuss the issue.
At least teenagers are indicating an interest in the world around them when they form opinions; showing that they're making the gradual steps towards becoming a citizen of the world.
The moral of this story? Science is evil. [OBVIOUSLY]
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