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Holes in the Head


Earlier this year I attended a talk by a local journalist to a mostly young college audience. I don’t recall how she got on the topic, but mentioned that young people’s minds haven’t developed yet, causing there to be holes in their heads. Many students laughed and a number of faculty members nodded their heads. I wondered if there was a way to find out when my holes had closed, or if they had, as I’d clearly made a huge number of bad mistakes from my late teens until much later years than I’d like to admit.
I began re-thinking about this concept while watching American Animals on the fourth of July. The film deals with the true story of college students who try, and miserably fail, in stealing rare books (including Audubon’s) from Transylvania University’s library. This Kentucky-based school isn’t that far from where I live now, and lived during this failed heist, yet I don’t remember the story. Granted, I was living a nightmare of my own making at the time, in a job I’d taken to get out of what I’d thought was the worst nightmare. It was the type of job that Warren, Spencer's more troublesome friend in the movie, rails against, and uses as an example of what you don't want your life to become. Were holes still present in my head during those times? I wonder.
Of course, many of the decisions I made in my twenties and thirties had seemed to make sense at the time. They just somehow didn’t work out as I’d planned. Just like these hapless college students with their heist. It’s hard not to laugh when you see one of the characters Googling how to commit a robbery, but at least some of his holes had filled in enough for him to realize that he couldn’t just wing it.
Having gone back to school at an advanced age I've witnessed many young students, mostly male, with the belief that they could just wing it, yet with nothing to explain why they would think that. A lot of it was probably just fake bravura, with each of them fighting to become the top dog, but mostly it may have been those dreaded holes gaping wide open.
During and after the film I remembered back to my original college days, and the many stupid things I did, mostly in groups. In some ways it makes me thankful I’ve always been mostly a loner because it was when I was with other students that stupid ideas came forth, with each of us showing all those holes.
All four of the students portrayed in the film, even those who weren’t in the library when the heist was committed, served seven years in federal prison, so it’s unlikely that the stupidity of youth, or holes in the head, would have helped their defense. Perhaps, if they’re lucky, the teenagers of today, who have witnessed and experienced many economic hardships, along with constant day-to-day violence in their lives, will be fortunate enough to have their brains develop a little faster than the rest of us. We sure could use some grown-ups right now.

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