Sara got home from Colorado today, so I spent the whole evening with her. Man, it's good to see her again; amazing how much you can miss someone, even if they've only been gone a week. We ate dinner with her folks, flipped channels, and met Matt and Holly for coffee and yogurt. This latter even gave me an opportunity to see how Friday nights in The Woodlands are conducted by rich, understimulated teenagers.

Just imagine your typical suburban area, but more compartmentalized (The Woodlands is constructed in such a way as to give the impression that the various parts of it are somehow distinct from one another) and with a higher number of kids with cars. We're not talking their parents' old heaps or fairly new low/mid-range vehicles, either: think BMWs, SUVs, and the occasional cool car from the '70s, when the kid in question's dad is having a midlife crisis that a new Corvette won't solve. Throw in cell phones, illicit cigarettes (I started smoking at 19, and it's fucking hilarious/pathetic to see 16-year-olds puffing on Swisher Sweets and Marlboro Lights they probably stole from their moms), Starbucks, and a complete lack of anything interesting to do, and you've just begun to envision how I spent my evening.

I feel old, but that didn't bother me too much, because my high school years were considerably different than the ones I watched tonight. I spent my final three years of high school in Venezuela, where I could drink freely and could almost always find something to do, be it going to the movies, hanging out a buddy's house, attending a party thrown by some diplomat's daughter or oil exec's son, and so forth. It was decidedly unlike the life other folks my age had at the time, and in retrospect, I'm so incredibly glad that I wasn't stuck here in Spring back then.

Not that I would've been in the same situation as all the kids I watched tonight. Not having ever been on a very high social level, I would've probably spent my weekends playing Dungeons & Dragons, reading, or something along those lines- cruising in circles through shopping centers would've been out of the question. Sure, I can't say for sure what it would've been like, but I was, and still am, quite a nerd, and would have acted accordingly. I know there's more to The Woodlands than bored rich kids, since suburbia is generally a pretty diverse place once you scratch the surface, but I'll be damned if I'll ever see the quiet homebodies, the smart kids, or the kids whose parents won't mindlessly fund their continual excursions to nowhere. I hope these latter groups turn out all right, and I'm fairly sure they will, because they know that high school's a giant popularity contest held inside a prison, and they're not trying to win it. They just want out of prison, and while there's several ways to go about it, the smart kids will realize that the best way out is in- into their own minds and hearts, into things that matter. The preppies, jocks, and socialites will ultimately fail to become decent human beings, because they mistook the map (high school) for the territory (the totality of life).

I've got to drag my carcass to work tomorrow, so it's time to read a bit of Lovecraft and hit the sack. Good night.


np: Voivod, s/t