On humble pie

Growing up, college was never optional. Of course, there was that time when I denied that I would ever be going to high school -- but then that was when I thought you could be a grandmother without being a mother, and I wanted to skip all of that "having kids" business and be some kind of cool aunt. Have the kids without actually having the kids. So it goes without saying that I didn't quite understand how the world worked when I thought high school was out of the plan. I don't remember college ever being an if. It was always a when.

And for the past five years, virtually everyone in my world has been of that mindset. As hellish as the social environment was over the past year, we had one thing in common: We were graduate students. We had fought our way through our undergrad years, earned that incredibly expensive piece of paper, and had come back for more. But not everyone lives in that world, and since leaving academia I have repeatedly embarrassed myself as I attempt to relate to people -- and fail miserably.

The first instance was at the Harry Potter midnight premiere. From behind me I heard what I assumed to be a collection of friends my age talking about having recently graduated. I seem incapable of remembering my own age. In fact, when I worked at CVS, just 2 years from the legal drinking age myself, I found it shocking every time I carded people who looked my age only to find that they were legitimately old enough to purchase their six-packs. Back to the theatre. So, from behind, I hear "Who else just graduated? YEAH class of 2011!!" I turned around and smiled, glad to have the opportunity to forge a connection in the hour we waited for the movie to start.

"I did!" I raised my hand.

They cheered for me. "From where?"

"Grad school!" I said, offhandedly. "Oh," I added, like it mattered. "Milledgeville."

They cowered. Immediately intimidated, they sank in their seats feeling upstaged. I tried to assure them that it really wasn't as impressive as it seems. That I'm bouncing around between parents' houses, unemployed, reduced to borrowing money for gas. That I was even at the theatre at all was nothing short of a miracle/charity case. But they never regarded me quite the same after that. I wasn't just an adult, I wasn't even a college student. I had finished graduate school. To them I must have been so old -- because to me at that age I would have been so old. I turned around and prepared myself for the movie, realizing that when I was their age, it was five years ago. They had just graduated high school.

Sometimes I wish I just graduated high school. That I had no idea what I was going to do for a living, that it didn't yet matter. That I had four years ahead of me, guaranteed to be much less "on my own" than I ever thought at that age. That, though it got old fast, cafeteria food is better than no food -- and that Music Education wouldn't stay my major for long. To think of what I didn't know was ahead of me at their age -- and to know that they don't know their own futures either. Who of their numbers will go to college? What will they major in, and how many times will they change? Will they take out loans as I did, allow their debt to pile up until five years later, "old" by their own standards not so long ago, they too can turn around and intimidate a group of new adults at having finished graduate school, not knowing that what the young ones were talking about had been high school.

------------------------------------

The second instance makes me appear even more aloof, even more unintentionally elitist. I was at wal-mart, putting money on a card to use for gas. Wal-mart, by the way, takes 10 cents off a gallon if you put gas on one of their gift cards. Anyway - So I stood at the register and the cashier turned to a fellow employee and handed her some money. The woman on the receiving end tried to protest, but the cashier insisted. "Let me know," she pressed, "when you get back on your feet. I am happy to help."

Having been yelled at while driving only the day before I couldn't help myself praising her for her kindness.

"Well, I've been there," the cashier replied, punching in my total.

I laughed a little, thinking I could relate. "Yeah. I'm living there now. I just finished grad school so I have NO money in the bank. My mom's buying me gas." I held up the bill.

"I just got out of bankruptcy so I know what she's goin' through," the cashier started. "She's not out of it yet."

Oh. I just smiled. Right. Because some people have real problems. Because some people have kids to feed, mortgages to pay, expenses they never imagined themselves not being able to make. Pardon the cashier for not having any sympathy for the spoiled ex-grad student, who will, eventually, have a job that can pay a mortgage and gas and groceries. Whose parents are generous enough to let her stay with them, whose parents spare what little money they might have for gas so that she might go somewhere -- anywhere. This wal-mart. An interview. Maybe one day a dollar movie. Who whines because, after five privileged years of studying, a job didn't march its way out of the woodwork and land itself in her lap. Because life doesn't work that way. It's hard right now, but it can always be harder -- and for many, many people, it already is.