Songs of Our Lives: Look Blue Go Purple’s “Circumspect Penelope”
Distance always seduced me—distance from whatever was most familiar, especially myself—but the difficulties in achieving such remove vexed me.
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high school
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Paper Birds
Clearing those pages plain, I'd make time fall away and distance shorten impossibly, fold upon fold, until the page was no longer a record of our histories but an origami swan.
Behind the Caves
Maybe all those rebuffs—the few I gave, the many I received—were just ways of protecting ourselves, those nascent beings so unsure of who we were or what we wanted to become.
In My Clothes
My cousin and I are in matching dresses with purple buttons, lavender yarn in our braids. Our mothers take us to Sears Portrait Studio, where we sit together in front of a marbled blue sky. I’m into it, all of it.
Songs of Our Lives: Dead Kennedys’ “Chemical Warfare”
I had no idea who Saddam Hussein was—or what band had just made that big, big noise—but I was sure of one thing: I was pissed off.
Studies Confirm: High School Sucks
…over the past 40 years, despite endless debates about curricula, testing, teacher training, teachers’ salaries, and performance standards…there has been no improvement—none—in the academic proficiency of American high school students.…
The Empty-Nest Yard Sale
Talking to your kid can be as nerve-wracking as going in for a big job interview. And it’s also like interviewing a temperamental actor or rock star—you’re afraid if you ask the wrong thing, they’ll tear off their lapel mic and say, “This interview is over!”
“Inside, I Still Feel Like I’m 15 to 18 Years Old”
Ever wonder why the high-school years are the focus of so many movies, books, and fun memories you can’t get over despite years of therapy? New York Magazine‘s Jennifer Senior (whose…
Albums of Our Lives: Tori Amos’s Strange Little Girls and Little Earthquakes
I was fourteen when Strange Little Girls was released and I was fifteen when my parents decided to separate.
The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To
D. C. Pierson’s adolescent heroes hope for a future in which “‘existence engineer’ and ‘clone wrangler’ will be viable career paths.”