A Real Adult Person (Who REALLY Sucks at Swimming)

Look what I got in the mail this weekend!

It's side-ways and everything! And thus I am officially an adult person, able to do things like drink, rent a car (sometimes), and drink.

Except, I go to BYU... so really just rent a car (sometimes).

Silly as it may seem, getting my license in the mail really did make me think about how much I've changed since high school.

For one thing, I have wheels now. A few months ago, my uncle helped me find a car. I bought a 2000 Hyundai Elantra - my very first car. (I don't count the Ford Focus mom and dad bought Paul and I, since Paul totaled it before I ever drove it.)

But its not really the stuff I own that's changed me. I can really say that I don't feel like a teenager anymore. College doesn't change that. During my freshman year I still felt like a middle-schooler: out of place and surrounded by people I was sure were older and wiser than myself.

This change made itself manifest last Friday when I decided to try something new and swim laps at the gym for a good cross-training workout.

When I set out to do this I didn't feel like I was going out on a limb. Since high school, my family has gone on quite a few surfing trips. While I hadn't ever swam for sport before, I felt like my surfing experience would make me a decent swimmer. Plus mom had me take lessons when I was kid. I remember the techniques:

No problem.

The pool at the gym only has three lanes, so I was worried they might all be taken by the time I got there; I didn't really want to share a lane with a stranger. When I got there, the pool was empty except for three Asian girls standing in one lane of the pool, talking to each other in another language.

"Sweet!" I thought, "I've basically got the whole thing to myself." I started my first lap.

Did you know that swimming isn't quite like paddling on a board? I think this was made clear since I'm pretty sure the only thing I was doing right was my arm movements.

No matter how straight I tried to make my legs, they kept going back to doing this dorky bicycle-kick movement.

I know that I'm supposed to put my face in the water and then turn my head out of the water to breathe. Instead, I kept spluttering and gasping. Eventually I decided it would be less embarrassing to just keep my head up. This, of course, began to make my back and neck ache because I was arching so bad.

By the time I finished my first lap, the girls at the end of the pool were cracking-up and since they weren't speaking English it felt like they were laughing at me, which is probably the case. I'm sure I looked like a class-A moron.

High school me would have gotten out of the pool right then and there. She would have waited in the locker room for 30 minutes so that the people at the front desk didn't notice that my time in the pool amounted to about 3 minutes. Then I would have left, never returned, and never spoken of it again.

But grown up me chose to believe that the girls were laughing at a really funny non-swimming-related joke, kept "swimming" until my 20-minute workout was finished, and decided to go again this week.

Though, maybe I'll go at 3 in the morning until I look less stupid. My new found maturity only goes so far.

This Generation Remembers

Those of us who were in our early teens on September 11, 2001 usually get brushed off as too young to really remember the events of that day. At least this has been the case in every college class I have been in where 9/11 was brought up. The professor would indulge the conversation for a few minutes and then say, "you guys were too young, anyway."

Please, give us some credit.

Marissa Lang, a Geology Major from San Diego, CA, remembers her teachers expecting her to be grown-up on that day.

"They pulled all of us fifth-graders into the library to talk about being mature and helping everyone understand what happened," she said. "I remember being upset and confused and I was pretty sure they were going to attack California next."  

Twenty-two year-old Animation Major, Chrisser Alvarez grew up in Falls Church, VA, about twenty minutes from Washington, D.C.

"We watched some of the footage in a few of my classes," he said. "Some of my friends were scared because their parents worked at the Pentagon or at the World Trade Center. I also knew some of the firefighters that were sent in."

Jaden Mitchell, an Economics Major from Portland, OR was twelve.

"Being so young, I believe it did have an effect on me," he said. "Suddenly I knew that so much of what we have can easily disappear from us and there's a lot of contention out in the world. In the United States we have a really strong sense of security. This event made me realize how lucky we are to have that security."

Janelle Miller, Recreational Management Major from Boise, ID was only ten on that day.

"I was pretty young, but I was old enough to remember it and remember what I was doing," she said. "It just made me not take for granted, as much, the freedoms that we have. It also made me more aware of terrorism and the price you have to pay for liberty."

9/11 effected me on more personal level. I grew up as an Army Brat and at the time my family was living in Germany. Dad was gone a lot after the attacks that day. The military base where we went to school was shut down for a while. When we did go back to school, our buses took alternate routes and had to go through extensive security searches. After things began to get back to normal, I remember asking my dad if he was going to have to go to war. He could really only say, "not right now," but he didn't seem too concerned. Four years later he left for a year-long tour in Iraq, and the very profound impact that this has had on my life is immeasurable.

Not only do we remember what happened on that day, it also had a major impact on our lives as children. This event ripped us all, simultaneously, out of our blissful ignorance where our mommies and daddies could always protect us from anything. That state where we were somewhat aware of bad people in the world, but we were more preoccupied with Pokemon, or whatever the cool thing was at the time. This was the major event for our generation that would become the foundation for political attitudes and life-long goals. 9/11 began to shape our futures, even though we barely knew it at the time.

Now we are young adults, trying to figure out what we want to do with our lives a midst two wars and financial chaos. Soon we will be filling the work place and then government positions. Already, we are making up the armed forces in the Middle East. Rest assured that throughout all of this we will remember 9/11 and the effects it has had on this last decade when we grew up. It is forever branded on our memories.

Lang remembers, like the rest of us, watching one of the most shocking images that these events presented.

"My mom and I were watching the news and there was a part where it showed people jumping out a window," she said. "I started crying and my mom was horrified that I saw that. She started crying and just kept apologizing that I had to see that. I just remember it was really traumatizing."

 It happened ten years ago, but this generation remembers.