Watching kids on a Friday night reminds me of struggle to belong

By David McElroy · September 6, 2019

The local high school football stadium is close enough to my house that I can hear the crowds cheer from my back yard on Friday nights in the fall.

I can hear the dispassionate voice of the stadium announcer saying that it’s third down and two yards to go for the Leeds Green Wave at the Elmore County 17 yard line.

I have a powerful emotional reaction to high school football. It was a big deal in the town where I went to high school and I was there for every game. The entire community seemed to be there. The stadium was always packed — and we went all the way to the state championship game during my senior year.

It wasn’t just “them” — the team — rather it was “us.”

It felt as though it was all of us, from the students and teachers all the way to the city business owners and civic leaders. Everybody was there. It was a source of pride. We were part of something bigger than just ourselves.

I’m sitting in McDonald’s late on a Friday evening watching high school kids who have just watched Leeds defeat Elmore County 33-27 — and watching them reminds me what it felt like as a 17-year-old to need to belong.

It’s been busy in here for the last hour or so. The local people are happy. A smattering of visitors from Elmore County seem a little glum as they stop for some food before their drive back home. (I don’t even know where Elmore County is.)

I can’t really identify with these kids. I have little in common with them. But if I squint hard and pretend the time is long ago, I can imagine that it’s my high school peer group — after a game or after church on a Sunday night — gathered around multiple tables and making an obnoxious amount of noise.

There’s a wide variety of teens among the groups I’ve been watching. They’re racially mixed. Some are attractive and some are a bit homely. A couple are still wearing cheerleader uniforms. There’s one guy who seems to be the clown of the group and he loves the spotlight. And a few of the players came in after they had showered and changed clothes.

They all seem to be working so hard to fit in. I can’t even explain that. Maybe I’m just projecting what I unconsciously felt at their age. Their jokes are loud and fairly unfunny, but they all laugh confidently, just as my friends and I did so many years ago when we were their ages and eager to fit in.

We weren’t really what I thought we were at the time. My crowd was mostly other kids from the youth group at First Baptist Church of Jasper. I had been president of the Youth Council for a couple of years. We were the biggest youth group at the biggest church in the county.

We would have thought of ourselves as better than the other kids. The thinking that went into that was complicated and contradictory. We were “good church kids” who had a lot of pride in being good, not mature enough — either as Christians or as human beings — to understand that our pride was sin.

I needed that group.

I had moved to this little town when I was in the eighth grade. Most of my fellow students had been together since elementary school. I was a bigger-city kid who didn’t really fit for awhile. But after a few years, I worked my way into leadership positions and found myself being part of these groups in which I had been the outsider in the beginning.

My identity was tied up in being part of certain groups and positions. I was one of the school’s “smart kids.” I was one of the First Baptist crowd. I was the editor of the school paper. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I craved the attention and approval of my peers.

As I watch these kids tonight, I’m powerfully aware of our need for social belonging and mutual acceptance. Humans have filled that need in various ways throughout history, but few things in the modern era have been as powerful as the sense of belonging that many of us had from being part of a close-knit smaller community.

It’s a testament to the power of that emotional attachment that I still check high school football scores on Friday nights in the fall to see how my old high school did. Even though the school board changed the name of the school — from Walker High to Jasper High — I still care how they did, even though I no longer know anybody connected to the school and have no real connections to the town anymore.

I was happy tonight to note that my Walker Vikings — excuse me, Jasper Vikings now — defeated their rival Dora Bulldogs by a score of 66-0. We’re ranked No. 1 in the state in the 5-A classification and that’s a pretty big deal.

None of that should matter to me, but it still gives me an odd sense of tribal identity to be proud of something which I was a small part of many years ago.

These kids in McDonald’s tonight are loud. They’re a bit obnoxious. Some of them are pretty full of themselves.

They’re just like we were way back when. And I was part of the group — wanting to be liked, wanting to be accepted, wanting to fit in — but telling myself that I didn’t care what anybody thought of me.

Life in human society can be tough, especially for those of us who are determined to live as we believe it’s right to live. Even people like me — who don’t want to live as other people dictate — need to belong.

I don’t want to need other people’s attention or approval, but I do. In many ways, I’m still that insecure 17-year-old who wants to be liked and loved and accepted.

We all need a place — a group, a community, a crowd — where we belong. No matter how old we get.

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We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

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