The Kids Today!!

The Ingersollian Pressure Cooker

So in the article that we read, someone stated the fact that because all of the American Teens lived in a small town, the place seemed like a social pressure cooker, and things happened on a bigger social scale because of the plain fact that 'everyone knows everyone'. I think that this is not only 100% completely true, but it also applies to Ingersoll, too.

First of all, Ingersoll is the smallest of small towns (without getting into village and or Middlesex/Thamesford territory). Lets put things into perspective: its white beyond belief, there are probably 2 black citizens of IDCI, there are 3 Asian citizens of IDCI (and I'm 'besties' with one of the 3), we think that London is a 'big city', going to Toronto is a huge event and is considered the Canadian equivalent of New York, New York, and I once at work, I refused to serve a woman who came into the deli demanding meat after we had been closed for a full 15 minutes. This woman turned out to be the hair dresser of the mayors wife. How my boss figured this out, I have no idea, but all I know is that I got a stern 'talking to' because 'this kind of bad customer service reputation could get around town when you're dealing with the mayors wives' hair dresser'...........yeah, right.

So in case you didn't already realize how small Ingersoll is, I hope that little example put things into perspective. We are small. We're a wart on the foot of the world. Ew, I just threw up in my mouth a little, but you get the point.

NOW, if that's not grounds for a heightened social conscious, I don't know what is.

Because of the fact that everyone knows everyone, we are (socially of course) under a microscope. You can't do anything in this town without your mother finding out. Why? Because if you decide to do something stupid on a Saturday Night, someone is going to see you. And that someone is going to tell a friend, and that friend will just happen to mention it to someone they work with at the grocery store, and that person will spill the beans about you to someone going through the cash while buying groceries. And that customer just happens to be a close friend of someone important within the community, and this continues on and on until almost literally everyone knows. 

With this in mind, I don't know if kids are more or less reckless when it comes to social behaviour. It should mean that the kids here are more tame and socially conscious when it comes to partying, etc but there is the darker side where attention-seeking habits could kick in and make kids more likely to act like morons in order to gain the attention of everyone in town.

Could it be that small towns in that sense can actually be damaging to kids? The fact that we feel that microscope peering at us at all times, and therefor are too afraid, tame or meek to express the real us? Think about all the Ambercrombie and Fitch wearing kids at IDCI and you can't help but wonder if they dress like that because they want to, or if its because they don't want to be noticed too much and they want to look like everyone else in order to blend in.

It takes a very brave individual to stand outside the norm and be themselves, let alone do that in an environment such as high school where you're highly judged, and to on top of that do it in a small town. In a high school in Toronto, you'll see a lot more kids wearing Mohawks and neon leopard print skirts. Why is this? You could argue that its because there are a lot more cultural influences in a place like Toronto than there are in Ingersoll, but I think that its something more.

I think that living in a big city like Toronto gives you a bit of anonymity. Instead of being yourself, known to all by name, you'll just be known as 'the kid that wore those combat boots with a mini skirt one time.' The social critiquing that may be done on you doesn't get back to you, and not everyone knows your name, your parents, etc. You're just another nameless, faceless person living in a hell of fluorescent lights, old desks and dusty text books, and because of this, you have more courage to be whoever the hell you want to be, because you can. 

While I will admit that small towns have a sense of unity and commitment to the community and people that you won't find in Toronto or Ottawa, I do believe that in some ways, being in this social pressure cooker does definitely have its disadvantages, especially if you're 17 years old and trying to survive high school. 

Seeing is Believing?

Oh great, this age-old debate. Buckle in folks, this is going to get bumpy....

But first, before I totally sink my teeth into this, I'd like to start off with a little story, one that I think many of us have gone through: the time that we first found out Santa Claus wasn't real.

My parents called me down into the basement and sat me down. My first reaction was that I had done something bad, and I was about to get it. I racked my brain to try and figure out what I had done now, and how I could get out of it. Little did I know that my parents were gazing at me sympathetically. My step mom was the first to say it:

'Chloe, sweetie. We wanted to tell you something serious. Something very important: this Christmas, there isn't going to be a santa claus, because santa claus isn't real.'

They looked at me expectantly. What they were expecting I don't know, because all I did was sit there and say 'Oh.....that makes more sense.' and sit there some more. Apparently, they were waiting for me to start sobbing because that's what my step mom did when she first found out, and my dad was pretty much expecting the same. 

See the thing is, I wasn't all that surprised or shocked or sad or anything, mainly because I had never really believed in Santa Claus in the first place (I know a lot of you are shaking your heads saying 'well THAT explains a lot'). 

Seriously, I'm not kidding: I never believed in Santa, or the Easter bunny, or the tooth fairy, or any of that crap. I don't know why, but for some reason, even as a kid, I was programmed to only believe it if I personally saw it myself. The fact that a fat guy in a suit could make land animals without wings fly across the world carrying not only himself, but a sleigh full of a WORLDS SUPPLY OF TOYS all in one night just didn't make any sense to my young brain, and since I had never actually seen Santa despite my 7 Christmases thus far on this earth, I had already come to the conclusion that Santa must not exist, because I hadn't seen him. The same goes for all the other little made up characters our parents produce: I never bought into any of it. 

Sure, I wanted to, I wanted to be like every other kid and get all caught up in the whimsical-ness of it all, but my logically little mind wouldn't let me. 'No, Stupid! Don't leave cookies out for this fraud! THIS MAKES NO SENSE AND YOU KNOW IT! Stop it damn it, STOP!'

Okay, so the inner monologue thing IS going a bit far, but the rest is all true: I never believed in Santa because I never saw Santa. So I guess that you can pretty much guess where I stand on this whole 'Seeing is Believing' thing.

I'm one of those few that live by the 'if I can see it and I can touch it then its real' motto. That might be one of the main reasons why I'm an atheist: in my lifetime, I haven't had any spiritual journeys, or anything remotely close to what most people call an encounter with the divine. Religion has played a small to minuscule part in my life, and I can't say that its made it any better or worse, thus I am null and void when it comes to being spiritual. That's about the nicest, safest way I can put it, and I really don't want to open that can of worms anyway.

So there it is, plain and simple. My humble and mortal opinion: you have to see it to believe it. Maybe its selfish to assume this, but I think that you only get to live once, so why spend this life believing your little heart out to no avail, with no grantee that you're going to 'see' anything at the end?