"You're only seventeen."

The world of high school.

White and Grealy reflect and revisit the trivital years that sadly can make or break a person. White very bravely enters the world of teenagers, except I don't exactly want her to be rewarded for her discoveries. Grealy looks back on a world very unkind to her. There was a certain passive approach to her writing, like she was holding back. That even still, she harbors emotions she never allowed herself to feal or even fear. Both define the social classes. The upper class: "The kind of kids who get their way because they have perfect hair, perfect teeth, et cetera." The lower class: The ones who get called "The uglist girl [they] have ever seen." And the middle class: The ones unafraid to cross the barriers. Who float and prove that "webs can be formed even if they are fragile and fleeting."

All good points, all over exercised, and known all too well. I want a different approach. White chose to look over teenagers in her wisdom, I missed the part where she used to sit. That one day she grew up and that these classes became less and less acknowledged. So while White looks over a class with pity, Grealy still hasn't let high school go. I don't exactly see people as groups, or clicks, or classes. When people ask me to describe someone I use hair color, style of clothing, smile, eyes... Never crosses my mind to result to stoner, prep, goth, loser, geek, smelly. I feel like that when reflecting on high school, it has to be done with love.

Writers that do the very thing that they accuse their subject of creating do nothing but recreate and reuse the same hurtful material.

I walk the halls of Snohomish High and everyday I see the same teenagers. The same people looking and searching and not being satisfied. I don't see any stoners, preps, or "fly swatters." I just see people. People who all feel pain, longing, anger, frustration, joy, heartache, sorrow, jealousy, and disappointment. "If there was a more important pain in the world, it meant my own was negated." There is no truth in that lifestyle, and there is no more truth in it's opposite. There is no measure of pain when it comes to the hurt of this world because we only have one heart, and one measure, and we only feel the pain we feel. I don't try to make my pain irrelevant, nor do I wish to advertise it. I feel, I pray to God that it leaves me, I pray that I can let it go and hold on to the hope that is mine to claim, I heal, I share my triumphs, and I help someone else triumph.

That is a true statement of highschool fourty years ago and today. Love triumphs.