Beginnings

Dialect

I went to a fairly large High school in a rather affluent area of New Jersey. I would have to say that I was not your typical teenager. I loved High School. Like, I loved it. I loved the structure, the social setting, the gathering of so many different people from all walks of life. Our school, however did not operate as most high schools did. It had a language all its own. Like when twins create their own communication or interpretations of things that only they can understand, that was my high school, possibly even just a few grades worth. I find myself on a daily basis, in regular life and even with my children using words and catch phrases of which not only do they not understand, but they find strange when I giggle at myself referring to the time and context to which the word would be used. Somehow I believe this language connected people in a way that nothing else could. Like going to a foreign country and not knowing the dialect, but knowing enough to get by. I can not put my finger on it, but even today I am constantly reminded of the caliber of people who attended that school. They lead rich, full lives. They have families and are successful and articulate. I feel I have some type of bond to these people I haven’t seen for nearly twenty-five years. Our roles however do not change all that much even if we do. The way in which we saw ourselves in high school is not exactly how others saw us. I for one thought of myself as a funny, outgoing, smart young lady. I did sports and theater and had a job and of course a boyfriend and a close-knit group of both male and female friends. I partied of course and smoked in an area of the school when they still allowed smoking on campus’. I am pretty sure looking back I was a tough, smart mouthed, nasty teenage girl much like the two that currently live in my house. I was fun, but also a lot to handle. It’s funny how sometimes events or parties or classes come to mind when I’m cleaning or pretending to be busy at work and how those stories, people and places are apart of me. Those people, that place, the teams and the shows and the boyfriends still hold a very special place in my heart. How is it that like when visiting your mother, you become ten years old all over again do we get those who knew us way back when to see us as we really are? As who we are now? There is no magic potion to being different or grown up or acting as an adult. There is no way to tell someone you’ve changed. The only thing you can do is live the change and hope to god they see it too, but if they don’t does that mean you didn’t really change at all? Or are we predisposed to being a certain way based on perception being reality? Logically none of us are who we were in high school, unless of course you’re still in high school. But the question remains If we go back to those people and that place, using the language we know to be the thread that holds us together…..how can we ever be who we are now? And more importantly how will they ever see that? Food for thought…

imagesC2J2NMJD

2 thoughts on “Dialect

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s