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]

Haha! An actual chance to write! Better yet, an actual chance to write that I am seizing with gusto! Look at this enthusiasm with this seizing!

Despite the fact that I could actually be working on my backlog of RP stories, or that I could actually start NaNoWriMo (seriously, I have yet to get even a single word down for it. Perhaps later tonight. LOOK AT THIS NOT-SEIZING!) or that, perhaps, I could even work on my rough draft that's due on Thursday for AP Lang. But this doesn't matter. Because at least I'm writing. Whee.

I could write about my week, except for the fact that... well, I don't remember my week. Besides the fact that I stayed up until at least ten-thirty every night so I could finish homework (except for Tuesday, Labor Day, but I stayed up past midnight talking to J until I fainted from exhaustion)

What is this homework I have been staying up late to finish?

AP Language and Composition.

Ah, the dreaded AP Lang class. Bane of junior's existence. Seniors who took it last year take girlish delight in the junior's zombie gait, flat stares and slight twitches occuring, coincidentally, whenever rhetoric and humour are mentioned. ("Hyperbole!" you may think. "They are not zombies at all! HAHAHA!" If anything, that passage was actually understatement!)

We do this to ourselves, though. The counselors aren't forcing us to write AP classes on our four-year plans, our friends that don't take AP classes don't understand why we would purposefully take a class that would leave us dead by the end of the year. Some parents are upset at how late we have to stay up to finish homework, some are all for their child taking the classload, no matter what.

Personally, I did it mainly so it would prepare me for senior year and college, and also for my interest in writing. As Mrs. B likes to remind us, AP Lang is not the book club. It's not centered around reading and discussing books, but to analyze and write essays, understand different writing tecniques, so on and such forth. AP Lit reads, AP Lang writes.

However, I don't know how I'm supposed to learn this information forever if I can't remember the beginning of this week.

Also, and I'm ashamed to admit this, but I don't feel smart unless I'm IN the "smart class." And even then, I don't feel smart unless I'm at the top of the class. B's are supposedly okay, but I feel brickdumb when I have one. A lot of people seem to think like that, I've noticed, and not just the people with parents pressuring them. Somehow, at least half of the teenage population has developed an inferiority complex when it comes to grades.

Interesting timing, but The Soup is on and Joe McLovelyHale brought up WifeSwap, and these crazyass parents. "Because if I'm not judgemental of what they're doing, I'm setting them up for failure."

Right, your children will fail if you don't tell them enough times that they're doing so many things horribly wrong.

Therapists will have a good time in the future.

Hooray for my first rambley everywhere uncentered blahblahblahg! Yay!