Marc Downs:  

? (Remember, I am writing from Dallas) -Leaving campus whenever on Campus Crier boondoggles. -Carl's Jr. - How can you not study, ever, and even graduate? Largely foreign concepts to the Downs youth. It is easier for me to explain why not to allow the soles of your shoes to be seen in Oman than why 12 naked guys should have climbed out of my van to run across (someone elses) campus. Heck, I can't even explain it now myself. One of the things creating this experiential gulf is the car culture we shared. I remember getting in trouble once with my dad. The credit card bill arrived, upon which were my gas bills. Yes, I was spoiled in this way, and many others. I only lived a block from Lowell; On Richvale, just off 1st. A very short walk, which I drove daily. More than that, evidently. At least more in the month preceding the arrival of said credit card bill. I was called to explain, there in our kitchen, How it was that I needed to fill my van with gasoline. Every single day for an entire week. This had to be the equivalent of a hundred round trips to school a day, every single day. I could have driven everyone to school that week! But Huntington Beach was not on the way to school. Nor La Habra Yamaha. Nor any girl I was dating. (I know this to be true simply because I didn't know any girls who lived on that hundred yard stretch of first avenue between my home and Lowell.) I mentioned a gulf between my kid's youth and ours. Yes indeed. Where we would, then, ride our bikes to the beach, when necessary, my kids have never ridden to their schools one single time. The distance? No, my son's school is less than a mile away. Traffic, then? Nah, come on. Beach Blvd compared to Preston Road in Dallas. It is a wash except for one thing: they wouldn't have to ride along this busy street, just cross it. No, none of these things explain this gulf except the passage of time. The world has changed and, in this way, for the worse. I have meandered through five thousand words this afternoon, and I know I am trying your patience. So I will close with one similarity connecting my high school with my son's: water polo. It was fun then, and it is fun now. For him, and for me I still like to play, and we play together in club games. And I get to cheer him in high school games. I enjoyed playing in club polo in school, and he is looking to play in college. Close to you, probably. He is looking at Claremont McKenna, Pomona, and Occidental. SAT's are taken, results not yet known. (One more academic gulf: SAT's? nope, never took them.) But I will close with a water polo vignette given to me by George, an Australian who plays with me on our club team. George is 58, and has been playing since he was 16. You may notice that high school and college players are kind of high in the water; their head are out of the water. And necks. And shoulders, too. When they shoot their whole torso may clear the surface. As we swimmers age, we settle, and we settle some more. In our fifties our torsos are unseen from the deck. Sometimes you can see our chins. But mostly you just see a forehead, eyes, and a nose: We are like crocodiles. But we are still afloat. marc