Skip to main content

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.

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Clueless White Privilege

I should state up front that I am a white woman, and compared to many in this country I would be considered privileged. There have certainly been times in my life that I didn’t fully grasp that and said and did things that make me cringe now, wondering how I could have been so unaware, but I never had the power mixed with that cluelessness to affect the lives of so many people in such drastic ways. The U.S. Supreme Court does have that power, and appears to have a majority of clueless wonders that are about to do just that. Depending on what poll you look at, anywhere from half the country to three-quarters support the right of a woman to control what happens to her body (i.e. get an abortion), yet it looks very much like that long-held civil right will be taken away by what, I view, is absolute cluelessness of the world we live in, and with five of those justices being white, it really is impossible to not proclaim it white privilege after hearing their comments...
Read more

The Little Things

I still keep seething, not just about this election, but also the 2016 election. Last night I was on a webinar with other heartbroken women, who thought this time would be different. One woman mentioned that this all felt like PTSD. The meeting tried to focus on healing and giving space to mourn before getting out there again. And while I understand that need, it was not resonating for me. Just like the many ( many ) posts on my social media feed that keep spotlighting positive quotes and talk of self-care end up making me feel more angry. Instead, I find myself ruminating back to another election, not to 2016, but 1984. I came home from junior high one day to have my mother tell me that my father had registered to vote for the first time (if you know me and you’ve heard me tell this story or read a previous post about it, I’m sorry, but we all have things in our lives that get stuck). I think I hadn’t even realized he wasn’t registered to vote. It turns out he wasn’t excited to go vot...
Read more

Pro-Death

  I grew up in an evangelical church, and as soon as I could escape it, I did. I remember my mother talking longingly about the mansion she would have in heaven and, even at a young age, I felt uncomfortable hearing her talk about her life when she would be dead. It was as though she’d given up on anything good happening in this world, and only had the next life to look forward to. If you read the recent rulings from the Supreme Court it’s as if they’ve given up on anything good happening in this world too, but also are trying to hasten us all, in one way or another, to the “next world.” If the baby that you shouldn’t be carrying doesn’t kill you then the guns that they made even easier to get, and easier to carry around, will. Or if neither of those situations do you in, then tying the hands of the EPA to reign in pollution and other hazardous-to-our-health chemicals will. One of my own coping mechanisms may have some similarities – dreaming of living in another, better, count...
Read more