Stereotypes and Teenagers

I've been thinking about how we are nurtured as children these days-since we've been talking about it in class- to understand how to do things and even how to think about things! I went on a big double decker bus with my youth group (about 30 people) over spring break around to places like west virginia (for white water rafting), south carolina/georgia (for working at a girls camp then hiking), and pensacola florida (where we lay on the beach and hung out all day). In between these events we slept on the bus during the night and brushed our teeth/changed for the day in gas stations. it was a really fun time and we all got used to walking around in our pjs in public places like cracker barrels and mcdonalds's. (which could be an interesting point in itself that in our group we accepted this as okay even if people stared at us sometimes) anyways, we met some really nice people (expecially in the south) that asked us about what group we were in and where we were going.



but i'm gonna point out this specific experience in particular. we had stopped off at a gas station somewhere between south carolina and florida at around midnight to get changed into our pjs, brush our teeth, and basically just get ready for bed. what we hadn't expected was that there would be a bunch of african americans with their crazy cool cars hanging out at this gas station too. it's interesting that us kids in the suburbs of chicago are taught to fear this kinds of situation from a young age. they might have been really nice people but we put them in a category of scary, druggie, gang members. now, i don't mean to offend anyone-sincerly i don't-i am simply stating that this is how white kids from the suburbs are taught to think. so were all kind of a little on edge and sorta walking swiftly back and forth from the gas station to the bus and watching them as they watch us. you see, our bus kind of draws alot of attention since it's big, red white and blue, and full of kids getting ready for bed. one of the guys kept calling to us to come over there and our youth pastor andrew went over and chatted with them for a while. then it was about time to leave, and the guy is calling ANDREW! HEY ANDREW! we kinda left after that and andrew told some of us that were by the door watching that they offered him things (a smoke, a ride in his car, and a few other things he didn't repeat to us...lol.) anyways, i just thought i'd remark on the fact that everyone is raised so differently and live such different lives in america. different things matter to us, different things are unimportant to us, but i think we all kind of have similar reactions to opposite subcultures (we think the other culture is strange and stuff like that).

to totally switch topics on you guys, my friends and i were talking on our bus about why we react the way we do to our parents nowadays. (we talk about weird stuff like that..not even sure how it came up! ha.) i believe that we need to dislike our parents so we will feel free to "leave the nest" if you will. we used to do everything our parents did and treat them like they had all the right answers but now it's all about how annoying they are and we even realize that they are wrong every once in a while (or more than once in a while). it happened to all the generations in the past and it will happen again. this reminds me of a sign in my grandparents basement that i used to not understand as a kid and now i understand it all too completely. it's sort of just thoughts of a parent.

"Oh to be Only Half as Wonderful as my Child Thought I was,
And to be Only Half as Stupid as my Teenager Thinks I am"

do you guys have a better explanation for this phenomenon?

P.S. Team Nixon stinks. They ARE crooks. MUAHAHAHAhahaha. Encouragers=THE BOMB.