I’m really good at screwing things up. People say that our generation is just a bunch of screw-ups, but I think that it is mostly the individual contributions of idiots like me who have typecast us.
For example, I went to Virginia Tech last year. I decided that partying and sleeping were a much better use of my time than this thing called “studying.”
I basically failed out. I mean, nobody can fail out in a semester, but with three F’s and a D, I made an incredibly worthy attempt.
Now, I pulled a 3.4 here last semester, but I continued to screw other things up. My daily philosophy has become “If it isn’t one thing, then it’s definitely another.”
Sometimes I get my cell phone bill and don’t pay it, I don’t register for classes on time or I spend my rent money on things for which it is not meant. It all leads back to the fact that I’m a big bag of stupid.
I don’t disagree that I am, more than likely, lacking of some mental capacity. I will take full responsibility for the feeble-mindedness of my behavior, but it truly gets to me when I see that our generation has been generalized, not by our actions, but by the way we look.
We are not being judged on our merits, but instead through our upbringing in a world that we had no part in creating.
I am starting to grow a beard again. I had one on my cross-country trip, but I shaved it off when I returned, not because I wanted to, but because I couldn’t get a job, everyone told me to and I scared old people.
One look at me apparently caused old people to soil their Depends, and cross to the other side of the street. Why? I guess they thought I was quite interested in robbing them of protein supplement bars and denture cream.
Teachers who are supposedly trying to educate the youth do the same things. A glance in my direction and I am just the partying frat guy who is not interested in school.
I am not a frat guy; my idea of partying is me and four or five of my friends drinking a beer while playing guitar and singing. I write, I read and I hike . that sounds more like a bookworm to me. Yet, instead of getting the benefit of the doubt, I am already in the hole.
I could sit and talk to you about Emerson, Thoreau or Abbey for hours, but if you remain steadfast in your decision to judge me, then you can remain a narrow-minded simpleton and continue on with your tomfoolery (I just wanted to say simpleton and tomfoolery).
So, I have an idea that will amaze most of you old folks. Try not to judge us on our appearance.
If we determined your worth by just looking at you, all of you former `60s flower children would not have jobs.
It may seem hard to remain unbiased right now, but why don’t you just follow the advice you have given us so many times: Allow our actions to prove who we are, not our appearance.
The mind is truly a terrible thing to waste, and using it for rash judgments and ignorant logic will do nothing more than make me put you in a nursing home in 25 years (in Fargo).

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