Following Yourself

My streak of avoiding public school bathroom stalls came to a thunderous and emphatic end in seventh grade. Behind a locked metal door, I sat on a cracked, black toilet seat and let my bell bottom corduroys wrinkle around my ankles. The bathroom door opened. I heard the sound of steel-toed bootsteps. Big Paul paused in front of my stall. I could see the dusty and dented tips of his size fourteen boots. One foot lifted and a second later my stall door was violently kicked open. Big Paul glanced at the waxy toilet paper squares I used to maintain my last stitch of privacy and then looked up, grinned and said, “What’s up, Fatty?” I immediately began another streak of avoiding public school bathroom stalls.

Although that moment was traumatic, I consider myself one of the lucky ones. For me, junior high eventually ended and I never saw or heard of Big Paul again. Kids today don’t have it so easy. While they still go through the familiar childhood transitions, the process of dusting off the past and reinventing oneself is a much more complicated process. When today’s junior high students move on to high school or from high school to college, they are – thanks to Facebook and other social networks — being followed by their digital selves.

This post really made me think about how differently we all view social networks. I've always seen it as a means of reconnecting to keep in touch, but what about to kids that are growing up with it? Dave Pell makes some interesting observations on his site. Read the rest of this short post here