The official site of the Torch, the student-run newspaper at Glenbrook North High School.

Torch

The official site of the Torch, the student-run newspaper at Glenbrook North High School.

Torch

The official site of the Torch, the student-run newspaper at Glenbrook North High School.

Torch

Radio masks our reality

Screen Shot 2014-04-10 at 5.58.13 PMIt was 3 p.m. and my brother and I were cruising along Techny Road, happy that we were free from school. My brother turned up the volume on the radio and I couldn’t resist singing along to John Mellencamp’s “Jack and Diane.”

I caught myself on the lyrics, “Hold on to 16 as long as you can,” pressing my lips together, wondering why I should want to be 16 forever. Although Mellencamp is a wise and talented man, he’s wrong on this one.

I know if I were to be 16 years old forever, I’d never get to experience the joy that comes with growing and continuing to improve.

It  seems that Jack and Diane, along with other characters in the media, pressure kids into making high school something unrealistically glamorous. They convince us that teenage life featured on the television is the classic All-American high school experience and make us feel badly if our own lives don’t match up. They make it seem like we should wish for our teenage years to be eternal.

If I had to rewrite this ode to high school years to represent high school as I see it, the first verse would probably go a little more like this: “Little ditty about Jack and Diane / Asian girl and Jewish young man / kickin’ back, playing Bananagrams / or they’re studying for their final exams.” The song would continue on, explaining Jack and Diane’s adventures on maybe the speech team or perhaps in Spanish National Honor Society.

High school is filled with good times, but don’t feel like that means being the glossy character promoted in the media. Yes, Mellencamp claims high school to be the “thrill of livin’,” but that doesn’t mean every Jack is a football star and Diane is his beautiful girlfriend. It also doesn’t mean there isn’t more to life, including the exciting things to come.