All About Adolescence
The death and resurrection of awe
The death of awe was a necessary loss, collateral damage in the quest for realism as a personal, internalized brand
When I found the clothing planted in the bottom drawer of my dorm room bureau, I knew instantly why it was there, who put it there, and what I needed to do. Scooping up the unfamiliar items, a purple Ralph Lauren button down lying on top, I made quick tracks for the laundry room and placed the clothes in one of the empty dryers. It was just another in a series of efforts to make me out to be the resident thief, ostensibly driven by my relative poverty and shitty wardrobe to steal the Polo-player embossed broadcloth shirts of my peers.
In my dorm room, I’d sought escape from this persistent bullying, a different flavor from the incessant physical threats of my previous school back home. There, the social machine churned out fist fights, sometimes announced during a free-for-all lunchtime as a much-anticipated after-school battle, other times portended for me in an ominous, anonymous phone call the night before. Every day, I’d arrived at school, ready for combat as an 11-year-old, then a 12-year-old, and then a 13-year-old.
