The Sun Also Rises … But Not Here.

By Leon Sterling, Unfiltered 8-12-05

By Leon Sterling

I had a kind-of, sort-of girl-friend in my junior year in high school who prevailed upon me to do her a favor. A huge favor. A monumentally enormous favor. She had a friend (whom I’d never met) graduating from a Beverly Hills high school, and her friend didn’t have a date for the prom. (Yeah, I know, this is starting to sound like The Big Chill.)

But not only was my girl-friend’s friend without a date for her prom, her entire right leg was in a cast. (I was sixteen; I didn’t yet know how to say “no.�) And not only was her friend’s entire right leg in a cast, her graduating class had voted for an “all-night� prom, the dopes. The deal was, they could choose to either go home at midnight, on the dot, or not go home before 5:00 a.m. That was it. If your class chose an all-nighter, you were in for the count. The doors were locked. (Yeah, I know, this is starting to sound like Carrie.)

Yes, it was an excruciatingly long and tedious night. I had rented a tux, and “my date� had a fluffy, fancy prom dress, which almost entirely hid her cast. We were all dressed up with nowhere to go but that round banquet table and those lovely, comfy folding chairs. We couldn’t dance. All we could do was sit at the table, and talk. Until 5:00 a.m. She was very nice and tried very hard to be gracious. I could tell it was a big strain on her so I tried hard as well, while we sat there, and while I was still able to talk.

That was the night I found out how little the majority of high school students (me included) actually knew. We were all semi-comatose by 2:00 a.m. By 5:00 a.m. we could barely muster the energy to walk out the doors. (I’m pretty sure that’s what the adults were counting on.) At various points throughout the night, several of the kids had attempted talking the teachers into letting us go, but it was no go. When they finally sprang us, and we were actually outside, moving toward our cars like zombies, somebody shouted into the still-dark night: “hey, let’s drive out to the beach and watch the sun rise!�

Did I mention that this happened to be California? When it started to dawn on me, while my date and I were sitting in my dad’s huge, new Chrysler, that the sky was getting lighter somewhere behind us, not in the vicinity of the enormous windshield in front of us, I began to wonder, “how stupid can we be?� The fact that the sun does not rise in the direction of Hawaii (when you’re on the left coast of the United States) is a basic fact of science, nature and life. This was something we should have known. We should have known by then, with complete certainty, that brushing prevents cavities, that it takes both a male and a female to produce children, and that driving to the beach and facing the Pacific Ocean would not then or ever bring us a glorious sun rise. But we didn’t. It was the capper on a very strange night.

After that night I didn’t see my “former� girl-friend much. Not just because of the fatigue and boredom and all the times I imagined telling her “no,� but because I gathered, during that endless night, that she had talked her girl-friend into this hair-brained scheme as well. Things were just never the same between us. And my view of high school was never quite the same, either.

So, I cut my sixteen-year-old son a lot of breaks. Mostly because I remember how I had the exact same combination of traits at his age: bright and not-too-bright. There didn’t seem to be much in-between, either. There’s probably a certain level of ignorance that’s universally forgiven in high-school-aged kids. But at what point does one have to say, “that’s just plain dumb.� It’s painful for me when I recall finding that specific point on that specific night in my junior year.

I had a best friend who wasn’t just a straight-A student, he was always competing with the other straight-A students to be number one, two or three in the class of three-hundred-plus kids. Despite his year-in, year-out stellar performance, he swore he forgot most things after a test. (I frequently outdid him – I forgot most things before a test.) By the time I was sixteen, a trend had set in: I was pretty good in language courses, including English, and not so good at most other things. I enjoyed science classes to some degree, and math courses to a far lesser degree, and PE to no degree. (Why do they make you sweaty and smelly first thing in the morning and barely give you enough time to shower?) History was occasionally interesting, but all those names and dates one had to remember for all those tests.

I’m not entirely sure what we were supposed to know by the time we graduated high school, but it seemed that the basics were being by-passed in favor of what we should know to get into “the college of our choice.� (More tests.) It would have been nice to come out of high school knowing such things as whether or not you’re getting the correct change from a twenty, how the president is elected, or why those pesky Europeans were constantly trying to over-run each other. Was it really because of their strong preference for their own language?

And, naturally, it would have been nice to know clearly and certainly which way our planet rotates so that we’d know whether we’re likely to see a sunset or a sunrise, depending on the direction we’re facing, whether standing or sitting, on said planet. (This is one of the reasons I’ve always secretly respected geeks, even before some dork made up the name. Geeks would have known which way to face to see a sunrise.)

So, I cut my sixteen-year-old son a lot of breaks. I’ve watched the transition from his wondering what they’re talking about at school, to wondering what he’s doing in school. He’s quite bright, and often quite bored. But, I can’t help it: I encourage him to do well, “for his own sake.� It creeps me out to sound just like my dad. But I do, because I know (as my dad did) that even kids are required to compete for their place in the world, starting with college acceptance. But also because, once you’re an adult, you’ll feel pretty stupid if you don’t know what makes the world go ‘round, let alone which way it’s going.



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Leon Sterling is an award-winning advertising, public relations and marketing communications writer/consultant now located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He can be reached via e-mail at: lsterling@compellingconcepts.com

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