Becoming Stagnant

Today, I realized that I live in a shitty 80's rom-com movie.

It sounds odd. Allow me to elaborate. Technically speaking, this is my blog, and you as the reader have absolutely no input as to what goes in it, so I suppose it's a bit pointless asking for your permission to elaborate. Moving on.

Over the years, I've noticed certain...things, within my community. Everyday things that make me pause for a second and think "huh, that was odd." Small oddities, almost like something that you would see in a movie. These little occurrences are frequent and trivial little things, and I've come to view them as chance events with no particular importance.

Today, all that changed.

It started innocently enough. I entered my Western Civilizations class, eager to finish it up and head home. As the bell rang and the class settled in, I was struck by another of my "movie moments". Everything was perfect-the teacher slowly paced the room, eyeing every student and giving us a brief synopsis on the influence of philosophy on Greek culture. The students bathed in a sea of apathy and fatigue, desperately wishing for a way to silence our underpaid overseer. I silently battled exhaustion with the power of doodling, idly drawing a tapestry of whimsical imagery in my notebook in an effort to stay awake. I looked up from my notebook and surveyed everyone in the class. The clothing, the way they carried themselves, the subtle-as-a-bulldozer texting methods of those who wished to remain unnoticed.

Then it happened.

The moment crystallized. Every detail, every color flashed with brilliance. My vision swam and I became dizzy as the image burned itself into my brain. A thought, a terrible hypothesis the likes of which I couldn't begin to fathom was forming, fragmented thoughts coalescing into a monstrous and amorphous shape that I couldn't bear to look at. Panicking, I asked for permission to go to the bathroom.

Stumbling out of the classroom, I made my way to the cafeteria, towards where the restrooms were. I was reminded of The Truman Show, when Truman's suspicions that his world isn't quite right are all reaffirmed. Mind you, I wasn't under the impression that I was being recorded and televised to the nation, but I couldn't shake the feeling that my entire world was...fake. Trapped within an insulated bubble.

Before I could reach the restroom, my ear was caught by a nearby conversation. A young man named Andrew, known throughout the school as being the personification of a meathead, was regaling a gaggle of young nubile-bodied females with a story. I paused, listened in for a minute, and felt my horror grew. This guy, this Andrew, this perfect movie-trope in a school choked with every conceivable cliche in the book. The thick neck gorilla-man, the guy that currently holds the bench press record for our school, the one whose voice drawls at the speed of hardening molasses while he enlightens his crowd with a tale of him apparently beating the everloving shit out of somebody that got on his bad side. The Jock.

Like this guy, but functionally retarded and just unreasonably massive.

I cast about in a fruitless attempt to convince myself that it wasn't true. I pirouetted around and there, strutting through the middle of the cafeteria like Athenian goddesses, walked a clump of no less than 7 make-up laden sex idols. It seemed as if every attractive girl had banded together into one hormone-baiting superpack, and were in the process of flaunting their obvious control of the entire school. The Mean Girls.

Like this, but all of them were white and platinum blonde.



They were everywhere. Every stereotype, every God-forsaken social clique was present and accounted for. Suddenly, the amorphous terror was complete, the fragmented "movie moments" solidifying into one terrifying conclusion. My childhood has already been written in hundreds of screenplays and award-winning movies, nearly everything I've known up to this point has already been written.

I live in a movie.

Not literally, of course. But my community, my school and friends, almost every facet of my midwestern whitebred suburban existence has already been experienced by a thousand fictional movie characters. The stoners, the hipsters, the band kids, theater kids, football jocks, lax bros. The volleyball girls that have all but replaced the cheerleaders as the dominators of the sexual-appeal leaderboards (maybe that's a bit sexist, but it's totally true). The out-of-touch faculty that has no idea how to approach the 21st century. Everyone here was just a pathetic rehash of the "laughable" cliches from the romantic comedies that plagued the 1980's. The cliches that we've all seemingly tricked ourselves into believing aren't relevant anymore. The cliches that are alive and flourishing, now more than ever, in this purebred caucasian paradise of shallowness and material wealth.

Now that's all a bit melodramatic, but you get my point. Basically everything I know comes from a movie. Whether the movies came first or not is irrelevant; what matters is that my life has become stagnant. Everything has already been written, every action has been performed. Heck, we even have a token jive-talking black chick who's always going on about some "skinny ass white boy tryna get dis piece a chocolate ass," (I wish to God I were making that quote up, but I'm not). I've made a habit of joking that I go to school with a bunch of Barbie dolls, but it's never taken such a literal meaning until now.

Existential crisis, man.