Pessimistic Politics: It Ain't Like High School

One of the worst parts about writing to a target audience is that some target audiences are too stupid to read what you write. This presents a dilemma that we writer types call “a big problem.”

Today’s article is addressed to the most intelligent society on the face of the Earth: high school students. When I say “most intelligent society on the face of the Earth,” I’m talking relatively. The high school students believe they are the most brilliant minds in the universe, having discovered every known fact in the universe and are the inventors of sex. The rest of us see big, awkward, whiny kids with acne.

I know, I was there.

I’ve been out of high school for a little over three years now, and I haven’t moved a whole lot in the Grand Scheme of Things; on the State Route of Progression, I have moved an estimated fourth of a millimeter. Despite my short lead on a standard high school student, three years away from high school has taught me some important lessons that boil down to one basic concept: I am an idiot.

In the vast world filled with go-getters, bread winners, and smash successes, I’m little more than dryer lint. In high school, I had it all figured out and I was king of the world. Granted, there probably wasn’t a whole lot keeping people from beating me up besides the fact that it was illegal, but when I was in high school, life was good. Very good.

Then I graduated. I want to state for the record that this was not my decision. I would be just as content attending the same classes, learning facts that have no use in the “real world,” over being sent out into society with nothing but my wits to protect me. I wanted to stay in my little world of high school where the most important thing I had to worry about was getting a girlfriend.

I loved high school, and am ashamed to admit that it is a strong candidate for the “best years of my life award,” which would prove my mother right. I never wanted to admit that my mother, or any other person who disagreed with me, was right, and that's the reality high schoolers cling on to. The fact is, and I know you high school kids won’t believe me, even though I swear I was there, those old fogies are right. And you will join them one day too.

High school is actually a sub-world, separate from the rest of the world. This is probably because high school happens at a time when kids are turning into adults and suddenly start finding themselves with more responsibilities and expectations. This is just a nice way of saying that they are high on hormones and lovin’ it.

My friend C made an insightful observation about this phenomenon. He said that when you’re in high school, your entire world is that high school, and as far as you’re concerned, it’s involved in world affairs directly. But once you get out of there, that same international superpower is now just some crummy school with crummy food and crummy idiots. As far as the world is concerned, it never existed, and you start to believe it.

When you’re thrown out into the real world, it can be quite a shock, because you’re on your own. Even if you still have parents to mooch off of and your old friends to bother, you suddenly find that you have other things to do besides hanging around with people who think like you all the time.

Eventually, you’ll realize that there is this thing out there called “the future.” This is a scary, evil thing that refuses to guide you through its obscurity. Not only do you have to get by from day to day, you also have plan for the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that for the rest of your life. It may sound like a lot, but don’t worry, because as you get older, time moves much quicker, so before you know it, you’re dead!

You’ll have to get a job. Now you may already have one, but unless you’re one of those rich spoiled brat kids whose daddy gives you a fake job, like the executive of corporate air circulation, you’ll need a better job to pay off the financial death threats (also called “bills”) sent to you by evil monsters (also called “corporations”). Your job at McDonald’s isn’t going to cover the flood of death bills that will knock down your front door upon delivery. You don’t need a job, you need a career.

Careers are also evil. They’re like jobs, except you’re going to be doing it for the REST OF YOUR LIFE. Don’t worry though, because like I said before, the next sixty years of your life is going to go by as quickly as the first twenty, and then it’ll all be over. You need to have a career or you’ll end up becoming a drunken hobo, and nobody will like you.

You’re going to need a car. You might have one already, but you never needed it in high school because (let’s face it) you weren’t doing anything important there. You’ll need the car to get to your job (excuse me, “career”), get to the grocery store (for more bills), and get home to your one-bedroom apartment whose rat tenants outnumber the human tenants by a ten thousand-to-one ratio. You’ll also need it to take the kids places.

Ha, ha! I don’t care who you are, because if you live in America, there’s a good chance you’ll get married and have kids, whether you want them or not! Sure, you could “play the field” as a way of life, but eventually you’ll transform, magically, from a studmuffin player to a depressing old coot who’s constantly trying to pick up dates at bingo.

So to summarize the points thus far: In high school, you can occupy your time with free, tax payer-supported public education, free room and board, and the lack of any responsibility to society. When you get out, you’ll have to pay for education (should you so choose) and/or you’ll need a job (and eventually a career), your parents might wise up and kick your butt to the curb so they can make up for all of the time you and your siblings stole from them (more on that later), so you’ll have to find your own place, and you’ll need a job to pay for it. You’ll also need to meet a nice mate that you will marry, or you’ll die a bitter and lonely husk of a person. We’re looking good so far!

You’re definitely going to need a spouse. Although America today is pretty liberal about singles, there is still a major drive to eliminate them. Look at all the singles’ networks that try to hook you up with anyone on their list, even if that person is a convicted serial killer. Of course these services only personally care about getting acquainted with your money, but you don’t see commercials on television like this:

“Come join the Dump that Chump divorce network, where you divorce your perfectly good spouse that you’ve spent twenty years and had three children with and meet other divorcees who were intelligent enough to give us their money! Express annulments available, all major credit cards accepted!”

A company like this would likely not do well, because in our society, marriage is a strong institution that is built on the solid principles of the avoidance of humiliation. Divorce is not a badge of honor, and divorcees are often looked upon as being rejected old fogies. At least the men. Woman can effectively seduce men well into their eighties, while men have had trouble with doing that since they were ten, opting to push girls into puddles and throw paper balls at them in an attempt to flirt.

In short, you need to get hitched, and in the event that things work out for you, you’ll be having a wonderful, happy, intimate (by which I mean filled with sex) relationship until one of you two (and by this I mean the wife) wants to have a baby. She runs the show here, because she knows that her husband will put up with sacrificing twenty years per child for (guys, we need to be honest) ten seconds of animal lust. Even if he resists, it won’t be long before he crumbles from the weight of the intense guilt his wife will place on him. If that fails, she can “forget” to use contraceptives or accidently pick out the condom that happened to have holes in it. If she really wants a baby, she’ll get one some way or another. Men, you have no choice in the matter, so just accept it and enjoy the ride.

After the child comes along, you can kiss your sex life goodbye. You’ll either be too tired, too stressed, or too brainwashed to think about having sex. Think about it: all childrens' entertainment paints a sugar-sweet picture of the world where sex doesn’t exist and babies appear when the parents look at each other in that loving way, as if they produce the child out of thin air.

This is the kind of thing you’ll spend your time watching. You’ll probably forget how to have sex and just stare awkwardly at the bedroom ceiling at night, thinking of cooties. I’m frankly surprised parents have more than one kid. They must accidentally roll over on each other in the middle of the night in just the right way, because after a couple years of Barney, the candle of lust has long since been extinguished by the fire hose of nonsensical innocence brought to you by loving and sincere greedy corporations and a pervert in a dinosaur suit.

I would go into the details about how children can fulfill your life and how your golden years will be a tender and loving time for you and your spouse, but I have no experience in that (not that I’m suggesting that I have any experience in most of what I just wrote just now) and I personally believe that this article has gone on way too long. Most of you teenagers have probably left this site a long time ago when you realized that there were no naughty pictures anywhere to be found. So to summarize my overall point so you don’t have read this entire article: high school is nothing like the real world, even if you know it is because you have all of the knowledge in the universe because you are a teenager. You’ll need a career and a place to live. You’ll need to get married and have kids. Then you’ll die. In closing: wild blonde sex party with Brittany Spears (just so the search engines will pick this site up).