Next year will be my 31^st high school reunion. That’s right—time crept up on us, but all’s well—we’re Gen Xers skilled in the art of adaptability.

It’s interesting to watch how former classmates are faring and the growing that has been done since our school days. Coming together again each decade shows how life experience can erase more and more of those barriers formerly constructed by cliques and fear.

Of course, surviving junior high remains at the top of the list for accomplishments. Junior high is the thorn in the side of childhood; the fading breath of innocence; the thin line between good and evil.

It is the beginning of slaying dragons.

I sat in the mid-to-back region of the class. It seemed the best place for an introvert who didn’t want to place her toes fully with the rebellious back row, but didn’t love school—not even a tiny bit—enough to join the front rows of overachievedom. My chair held a seemingly contradictory character who still holds that title today. Imagine being a bookworm in junior high. And a blossoming Christian. I got excited about literature, but I also loved getting my hands full of paint and was pretty decent at making a thing look like an actual thing. This made me only slightly cool. But I gained the most respect way back when for being physically scrappy, so by 8^th grade, being tackled because I was the skinny kid was becoming a thing of the past. I was also the flex arm hang champion going on several years in a row. I hope my older brother, Kenny, is reading this and remembers how I beat him. =)

Once, I got on honor roll by accident. I let my defenses down and made a genuine effort which shaved away even more cool points. When they called my name to walk up with the overachievers I stayed back because I was sure they had made a mistake or that I had heard wrong. Sure, I had my talents, but math was one dragon I repeatedly fought from fourth grade through college and I couldn’t believe I had actually gotten one of those “A” things in defeat of it (Alas, my final math slay was to burn my last algebra book in college).

In the 80s, teachers turned a blind eye to fights unless heads were being cracked (literally). I got physically attacked by boys and girls alike for being a lightweight. I also liked wearing dresses and looking feminine which is the best way to throw people off who think you’re fragile. I took ballet. It took several different approaches on the part of a few would-be bullies before they realized I could hold my own. Just fyi, ballet pretty much works every muscle in the body. So does being a kid who grew up in dirt piles and sticker bushes.

All was forgiven and I actually became friends with one of those bullies. In fact, I believe those experiences, painful as they were at the time, strengthened my mind and gave me confidence I wouldn’t otherwise have had. It’s also one reason I let my own kids loose into the school system. I wanted them to learn how to fight the smaller dragons while young to prepare them for the bigger ones that come later. Of course, to do that a parent has to release control and let them be exposed to garbage on a daily basis.

It’s not like Gen Xers weren’t exposed to garbage. Filth was more abundant than the coils in a rotary phone cord, and it’s definitely something that can lodge itself into the mind if one is not building a filter through which to let it pass. Being less cool by giving God an “in” was my start to critical thinking. Having a belief system with a God more real than I could adequately explain to others was more powerful than any lesson plan or activity presented to me, and paired with my inner stubbornness, it was my path to freedom. Even still, everyone longed to be the most popular. That’s what we understood success to be at that age, and what adults can still struggle with.

Slaying dragons successfully—accepting that no white knight may come to the rescue—made me less of a follower, although that road was a long, bumpy one. It was the beginning of learning to think on my own because I understood leaders are sometimes bullies. The most dangerous one turned out to be a smoother talking, manipulative dragon than any of us realized until adulthood, and only for those that got close enough to feel the fire. This person could take words and causes and make the good seem bad and the bad seem good. Life experience taught those of us close enough the destruction that really waited beneath.

I’m going to be blunt here, my fellow knights. I feel like our country has a bigger decision to make next month than in years past. I’m not going to tell you how to vote. But we are walking a dangerously thin line. Many evils have been made to look good and many good things have been made to look wrong, and it can certainly be difficult separating emotion from the big picture. If you look to the past, following popular culture (especially if you read the Bible as history) almost always leads to destruction or a painful do-over. Step away from the crowd for a while. Examine what lies at the very root of your values. Is it the easy way or the right way?

A new thing:

The Story Collector is a new short story I just published. Check it out!

Civilization has collapsed, and the man who’s responsible is buried in a small town graveyard. At night, teens Wren and Elias meet near his grave to spend some alone time together, but a stranger resembling a character from an old children’s book interrupts them with a strange message.

Get it HERE for a buck.