To Be Young Again

    For my fourteenth birthday my parents handed me a card.  I opened it with the fervency of any young person who has begun to grasp economics.  Inside was not the placid green portrait I had anticipated, but rather the bane of any birthday young or old.  I stared bleakly at a slip of paper that read "This coupon entitles you to GET A JOB!"  I looked up, head cocked to the side like a dog who's been given an unknown command, to see my parents beaming at the dish they had just served colder then the ice cream that was melting in my lap.
     Last week Cas and I spent two days and one night with a group of high school youth that had sought out, applied for, and been hired for a competitive program called the Youth Conservation Corps.  I had no idea young people of their caliber existed.  Come to think of it, I don't know that many adults that would spend their summer camping out doing manual labor at minimum wage out of little more then the simple desire to do so.  These kids weren't forced to do this, and they truly seemed to enjoy it.  There was no ladder to climb.  When asked, they didn't seem to register how good it would look on a resume.  One kid put it simply, "I would have just been sitting around all summer otherwise."  Well yeah!
    The time I spent with these kids made it easy for me to forget that I'm nearly twice there age, which was mostly good.  It also reminded me how much I liked hanging out with kids that age and how much they get it, and how much adults don't.  These are the people that are forming the world we live in today, and will be making the decisions for us in the next thirty years.
    I can look back now on my adolescent time and realize that was the lesson my parents were trying to teach me.  That it's not enough to just sit by and let everyone else foot the bill.  And that coupons for your birthday suck no matter how old you are.