Living in a small town can be both a blessing and a curse, and having grown up in one of these smaller communities, I think I can safely say that I’ve gotten more than my share of experience at both ends of the spectrum. There is a certain charm to living in an area where the trees still manage to outnumber the residents – being able to walk down the street without getting shot at is always nice, as is not having to wait a half an hour at the ATM to make a ten dollar withdrawal. Nonetheless, John Mellencamp wasn’t kidding when he sang about the little opportunity around these towns because I, for one, can vouch just how easily it is to be bored out of your freaking mind in a place like this!
“But up in the Great White North, there’s all sorts of things to do – you can go huntin’, or fishin’, or hikin’…” or so the people claim, but come on – this isn’t the 1930’s, Huck – how many kids do you know of that hurry home from school with plans of rushing down to the creek in search of bullheads?! Nope, kids nowadays have a very limited number of ways that they’re willing to spend their free time – either by a) hanging out with friends and complete strangers, or b) chatting with friends and complete strangers over the Internet because their parents won’t let them out of the house to do it in person…and rightly so, because just between you and me – there are some really creepy folks on the Internet these days! But that’s another column altogether…
Fortunately for my social skills, as meek as they may be, the Internet wasn’t truly a big deal yet when I was growing up, so hanging out was really my only option. This didn’t bother my parents in the least, as it usually just entailed gathering at one of my friend’s houses and playing video games or Dungeons and Dragons or whatever the geekiest thing in the world happened to be at the time – as long as I was home by 10:00pm, I was free to recite powerful spells and worship the devil and do all of those other things that the stereotypes suggested, and even a few others that they had never thought of! If nothing else, at least it prepared me for a few years down the road when I started a rock ‘n roll band, and then all hell broke loose… (we now collectively refer to these times as the good old days)
So while my friends and I chose to pass the time by being humongous nerds, other classmates of ours had their own ways of passing the time, whether it be by playing sports, working after-school jobs, or dry-humping on their parents’ loveseats – everyone had something to do! Times do change, however, and whether or not all of the Magic cards and basketballs and loveseats have simply disappeared at mysteriously high rates or because of some other, even more bizarre reason that my own creative forces can’t even come up with this late at night, kids today are finding themselves with just skads of free time on their hands – so much so that they’re pouring out onto the streets in troves, kind of like that mutant slime did in Ghostbusters 2, only with spiked hair and more piercings than the four members of the Red Hot Chili Peppers combined!
“They’re just hanging out with their friends – like you used to,” I’m told by their few and far-between supporters. I beg to differ, however – for starters, we didn’t have piercings to show our individuality, we had pocket protectors, and we didn’t hang out in parking lots so much as actual buildings – so while our activities could be considered hanging out, the new age version is more along the lines of loitering. Sure, it might be cool if the whole gang was just really into Rite Aid’s product line (their cotton swabs in particular are to die for…) and felt the need to share their love with new and potential customers as they drive by on Main Street, but I’m thinkin’ that this just isn’t the case…
Although the situation can be most noticeable during the summer vacation months, where it’s not at all uncommon to find many of the larger parking lots along the main strip completely packed with teens out for a night on the lot, to the point where there’s actually a waiting list leading out into the road, what caught my attention even more was the gathering I saw just the other night – keep in mind that this is Northern Michigan in the middle of January. Pulling up to a red light sometime between nine and ten o’clock at night, I looked over to see the parking lot of a local fish ‘n chips restaurant overflowing with cars…and no, their food isn’t just that good! There must’ve been two or three dozen kids huddled together in the lot, their pants halfway around their ankles and a steady stream of smoke coming from the center of the circle. The light turned green before I could tell exactly what kind of smoke it was, but…
Oh yeah, did I mention the temperature by chance?! It was seven. That’s right, just seven – Fahrenheit, of course, for all of you Nazis who somehow still manage to think that your metric system has a chance. The best visualization I’ve ever heard was passed on to me by another comedian whose name I cannot currently recall – around freezing (thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit), you can start to see your breath, but you know it’s really cold here in Michigan because you can both see your breath and hear it as it crashes to the ground! Here it is so blastin’ cold that the stars won’t even come out, and yet these kids are hanging out in the parking lot like it’s the 4th of July! Now that’s dedication if I ever saw it! (or stupidity…the two tend to get confused a lot these days…)
Who knows, though – maybe they’re actually on to something and we’re just too big a wussies to go outside and see what all of the fuss is about. For all we know, they could have the knowledge of a lifetime brewing out there, like ‘Spending three hours a day, four nights a week in sub-zero temperatures will add ten years to your life…’ or ‘True happiness can be found for only 99 cents from the Burger King drive-through late at night, as long as Dave’s working…’ or even ‘A strict diet of marijuana and cigarettes maintained will convince your brain that the real cold weather doesn’t even start until it get into the negative numbers…’ I don’t know exactly what’s going on out there, but nonetheless it seems to be enough to keep the chicks coming in by the carload, which is more than we could ever say about our all-night Dungeons and Dragons sessions!
They say that you never have to grow old if you don’t want to? Well in that case, if anyone needs me, I’ll be out chillin’ in the parking lot…literally!