Hanging out

It is a rainy Sunday afternoon in November, with nothing I want to watch on TV. All of my friends are away. My sister is at Green Acres Shopping Center. I walk through the house. My father is stretched out on the Lazy Boy recliner in the den, watching football. I sit down on the couch. A commercial comes on. A cute guy is in a sports car, driving a beautiful woman through a snowstorm in the mountains. When they arrive at their destination, a Victorian inn, every window is illuminated with a candelabrum. I walk to my parents' bedroom. The door is closed. I peer in.

I like going back to visit places that I had been when I was younger. I always remember things much bigger and more impressive than they actually are. It helps me put things in perspective and realize how much I've grown. But relating to people of different ages as you move from one stage of your life to another can be very confusing. Though you are physically bigger than you once were, it's hard to decide who you truly relate to. While others went home or to the beach, I decided to spend my spring break spending some quality time with my older sister and her family. Living under the assumed name "Uncle Elie", I immensely enjoyed being the fun and silly, if not utterly ridiculous, "kind of a kid and kind of a grownup".

So there you are, Dawson-like, brain and legs stretched out on some damp piece of lawn under the canopy of the wide Universe. It's you and some fellow graduates, Plato, Locke, Nietche, and the wisdom of the ages. You're half wondering just how deep you can get before you bottom out completely. A delirious cocktail of imagination, confidence and new freedom is raging through your veins: the New World has discovered YOU. And here's an Ally McBeal moment; your theme song comes to a screeching halt in the middle.

The first breath of summer brings with it a hunger to catapult over ourselves, to grow wild. To climb, vine-like, beyond work and darkness and books. To cling to the wall and blossom there. Not to go on to new things right away, but to take the old ones and make them flower. Not to change, but to flourish. We remember things about ourselves in summer, the things we have always loved about being alive. We strip ourselves of sweaters and of pretensions, of windows and of neckties.

Maybe it's the webolution, the pervasiveness of all types of media, and the ease with which we can now traverse the small, small, world in the comfort of our favorite chairs that's making me yawn even as I have seven applications running at once. Fact is, there's very little today's techno generation hasn't seen or heard or at least heard of. Just search for it, and you're there. It's all faster than I care to understand, and positively effortless. And all this "easy knowing" and fast food-everything seems to have a real effect: People who were born in the eighties seem just a tad more world weary than us Gen-Xers; and we seem jaded next to the Boomers.

Liz (Elizabeth) Hill, 21, is now a virtual Sophomore at Washington University. A talented drummer and guitarist, Liz spends her weekends playing at local clubs and the occasional wedding. She has not yet declared a major, but is considering either Business or Communications. Her family is sure she'll be able to retire by age 35, but Liz is not quite as confident. (She'll give it 'till 40.) Liz enjoys swimming and long nature hikes (well, as far as you can go in web-space), but is embarrassed to admit an aversion to bicycles.

Wyatt Dunn, 16, is now a Junior at Mulder N. Scully High School in St. Louis. His favorite subjects include Literature and Art History, but he is actively trying to wrap his brain around Calculus, with moderate success. After a period of not wanting to be part of anything, Wyatt joined The File, his school's newspaper, as Co-Editor and columnist, which takes up a large portion of his free time. (The Editor-in-Chief, Julia Korn, has been Wyatt's best friend since third grade.) His loves include The Offspring, Olympic Track and Field events, his niece and nephew, and Julia (but she does not know this.