Seventeen and clueless

By Drew Millard

It seems like the older I get, the more I realize that I'm not a kid anymore. Yeah, I know that in and of itself, this expository sentence is deeply simplistic and redundant, but that doesn't make it any less true. Right now, I'm a senior in high school. I have no idea how I got this way. It honestly feels like no time has passed since my freshman year ended.

There are guys on the school soccer team, my fellow seniors, who I look at, and think, "Oh my goodness. This dude is in no way similar to me; he's practically graduated – he shaves four times a week, for cripes' sake!" And you know what? If I don't shave for a week, I end up having a homeless-man beard, just like him. We're all alike.

I have to go to college in a year. I really can't wait. But I'm afraid of the whole "growing up" thing, I think. The way I see it, you turn eighteen, then you graduate, then you go to college, then you graduate again, and then that's where it gets fuzzy. What am I supposed to do after that?

As morbid at it seems, I really wouldn't mind spontaneously combusting the day after my college graduation. At least I'd have a definite goal in life.

But we're in the now. I'm kind of astonished that I'm in the class of the oldest students in Polk County High School – I feel like I shouldn't be this old. When I was a freshman, the seniors were terrifying. They were an unknown danger, lurking in the shadows, just waiting for a freshman to yell at for being in their way. I remember that a lot of the seniors smoked cigarettes – I don't think that I know any of my fellow seniors who smoke – and drove fast cars and ate fast food and had jobs and tried to generally avoid being at home as much as possible. Well, I've got four out of five down. Oh my... it seems that I'm as old as I thought I was after all.

It's just that, in a few years, I'm going to have to get a job, you know? And not just a job waiting tables or doing grunt work – like a "real job" job, one in the outside world, not Polk County. The thought of leaving Polk County terrifies me. What do people do for money when they grow up? I dunno, maybe paint stuff? Dance? Remember to put the right cover sheet on TPS reports? Bowl? All I know is that rug really tied the room together. Will I be saying this kind of things at the age of thirty? I sure hope not.

I guess that I don't really know what to do with my life. But the good news is I don't have to know. I'm 17 and clueless, and I just might be content with staying that way a little longer.