The Beings in the Zone

Welcome to the Knot Head Years. This is your Captain speaking. For those of you aged 13 through 19, please check your brain in at the door. You may retrieve it at carousel 8 upon reaching the age of 26.

It’s July 31st and I am riding on a 44-passenger bus, headed to summer camp with 23 high school boys and girls. I am the counselor for 8 boys. So far, I have had to walk to the back of the bus twice to retrieve my hat which has been pulled off my head. It’s going to be a long week.

Scanning the group from my seat in the front of the bus, they appear to be the same mix as when I was in high school. The fresh-faced girls are sitting in groups, talking about who knows what, and giggling. The pimple-faced boys huddle together in the stinky end of the bus glaring at them, their faces nearly hidden with their eyes at seatback level. I can tell they are planning something. They are like a pack of rats waiting to make a raid on an open garbage dumpster. Oh, I wish I could just walk to the back of the bus and snap them all with a towel. Why don’t they grow up? I remember when I was their age . . .

“Well, isn’t this just ironic!”

My left shoulder sagged low forcing my right shoulder blade into the air. I’m sure I must have looked the way a teeter totter looks when a fat guy is sitting on one end and there is no one to sit on the other end to level it.

“Larry,” I whispered, “get off!”

It was Larry, my Guardian Angel sitting on my left shoulder. Since I have aged and take less risks, Larry has had less need to rescue me. Hence, he has put on a few extra pounds.

“You know Larry, Jesus believed in fasting. It’s biblical. Maybe you should consider losing a few pounds yourself.”

“As you mellow, my boy, I mellow too,” he responded in his haughty tone. “It just seems so ironic that you are irritated by the actions of high school kids now because you are an adult. You have completely forgotten that you were once exactly the same, if not worse, as those knot head boys you are charged with counseling.”

It made sense. Usually, the reason someone dislikes someone else is because they see themselves in the other person.

“You would know, I guess. You’ve been beside me through every knot head moment of my life.”

“Those were the years when I was most active. Constantly keeping you out of danger and fixing your messes. I was a lean, mean, angelical machine but the stress did cause my hair loss. I can’t blame that on my mother’s side of the family like you can.”

“No heredity gene pool?” I jokingly asked.

“No mother,” he said. “I was created by God and it’s not wise to go blaming him for my problems.”

“It just seems like there is this large, long, clear, bladder bag that teenagers enter. They all do, without exception. They live in this twilight zone for up to 15 years before they pop out the other side. While they are in the zone, older, mature adults can try to communicate with them from the outside but none of their wisdom makes it through the membrane.”

“That is true,” Larry mused. “Some of the kids are only in the zone for ten years. I remember you popping out at age 28. Those years I was with you in the zone, older adults would be trying to tell you something but all you could hear was, ‘Waa, Waa, Waa.” The mature wisdom never made it through the membrane into the zone.”

“And did you smell the stink in the zone? It was like a barnyard in there.”

“That, my boy, was the smell of hormones. Boy and girl hormones. Mostly the reason why you were so crazy through those years. Look at buck deer during the rutting season. They are just plain stupid. It’s no wonder they get shot.”

“Yes, I can remember that the way to attract attention was by showing off in the most idiotic ways. I couldn’t keep my mouth shut, trying to be the clown, comedian, and witty one. And the stunts we would pull to physically show off for the girls – daring and dangerous. In the zone, you extend beyond what is safe because there is no fear of danger or death.”

“And the consequences. Sometimes I was able to save you from them, but sometimes I couldn’t.”

“It was my own doing. Thanks for trying. Would you mind switching to my right shoulder, I’m starting to cramp up a little.”

The week at camp went by relatively smoothly. The sun was out each day, the boys were trying their hardest to show off for the girls and the girls sat in their little groups pretending to ignore them. I lashed my hat to my head and offered advice to the kids all week long but I’m sure all that they heard was, “Waa, Waa, Waa.” I could hear Larry snicker and mutter, “Yeah right, they’re going to believe that.”

But that was summer camp. Tonight, they are out at my house for a BBQ. I told them from the start, “The pool is fragile. Only two kids in at a time.” Yeah right, I might as well have said, “Waa, Waa, Waa.” There are eleven of them in there now. They can’t hear me from inside the zone.

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