Have you ever been afraid of children? I have. Don’t get me wrong — they are great, but have you been to a high school recently? Teenagers are a force to be reckoned with.
During my third week in the United States, I ended up in Muscatine, Iowa — a small city with a surprising connection to China. Years before he became president, China’s Xi Jinping visited Muscatine on his first trip to America. He apparently cherished the memories so much, he came back years later and even visited the house where he had stayed. The room was full of Star Wars memorabilia. I guess the “owner” of the room Xi stayed in was also a teenager. What his hopes and dreams were back in the mid-1980s, I cannot know. But I did find out what some of today’s youth feel — and what they fear.
On my way to Muscatine High School, I couldn’t help but wonder whether the students would want to speak with us. I expected to meet a group of young people who had been dragged into a room to talk with nine foreign journalists. But the reality surprised me: They were eager to meet us. They were full of questions and more than willing to answer ours. We ended up having five or six 10-minute conversations with each group of students.
“You are a baddie. We wanted to talk to you the minute you entered,” one of them told me.
“So now I’m one of the cool kids?” I replied with a smile.
Once I was done telling them about my career path, I wanted to hear about their lives. Did they dream of moving to a bigger city? Some did. I told them how much I miss being able to walk from one place to another, and to my surprise — even though they were born and raised in the United States — they didn’t enjoy having to drive everywhere. They didn’t want to be forced to get a driver’s license the moment they turned 16 or rely on others to take them everywhere.
The careers they wanted to pursue surprised me. “I want to be a children’s mental health specialist,” two of them said.
I couldn’t help but wonder what motivated them. Was it the school shootings that happened across the country? Or do they feel their peers need someone they can confide in? Do they, too, feel the urge to share without fear of consequences?
I didn’t intend to bring politics into our conversations, but at some point, the subject naturally came up. To my surprise, the young people I met in Iowa — many years ago considered a swing state, now solidly leaning Republican — were not keen on the decisions made in Washington, D.C.. They wanted abortion rights. They didn’t want to see the National Guard on their streets. They liked Jimmy Kimmel and wanted him on air. The list went on.
Then the last group of teenagers sat at my table, and there it was — the biggest surprise of all. A couple of young boys, bright and full of dreams, told me: “We are afraid that we might be forced to join the Army if the United States participates in a war.”
They knew the benefits military personnel receive, but that wasn’t enough to convince them to pursue a career in the armed forces.
This surprised me. When did this happen? I know young people in Israel or Turkey, for example, have mandatory military service, but I never expected to hear American teenagers worrying about the possibility of becoming soldiers.
I will probably never meet those students again, but I left Muscatine knowing that not all is lost. The song “The Kids Will Be Alright, Eventually” came to mind after the high school visit. And they will be. I’m sure of it.
