Me: You know, kids, Miss Poppy loves substitute teaching and putting life experience to good use, but I didn’t realize I was so out of touch. Your phones seem to have become extensions of your very beings, and even George Orwell didn’t foresee newspeak evolving—or regressing?—to conversations consisting entirely of hieroglyphics.
Zoey: What’s hieroglyphics?
ME: Um… pyramid tagging. With a half-day to draw birds and ankhs, Egyptians could express laughter with a hint of existential dread. Y’all just say .
Jake: Miss Poppy, check out my retro-futuristic vintage grunge with a hint of ironic minimalism.
Me: You look like you got dressed at a yard sale.
Jake: No cap1! It’s all about mashing contradictory styles while wearing as little as possible. Shows my individuality.
Me: I suppose my parents thought layered Izods were senseless too. Okay, so what did you think of “Animal Farm”?
DAVIAN: Hella2 lame. Books are boring.
Me: I realize your attention can only span a dank meme, but it’s about corruption, and Orwell wanted us to see it coming. Soon, someone will write a pandemic allegory to help future generations recognize government over-reach. By then, maybe books will be your respite from a noisy world.
Cade: Gyatt!3 Did you see the TikTok with the baddie mom dancing on the table, but she was turnt4 and fell off? I mean, she was totally cheugy,5 trying to twerk at her age.
Me: My generation had our own slang too, but at least wicked, gnarly, and even tubular were actually words. And don’t even get me started on twerking and thug shake.6
CADE: Aw, Miss Poppy, do we have time before the bell to show you that dance?
Me: Um, sweetheart, for that, it is definitely NO o’clock. But we do have a few minutes and I want to tell you what I’ve learned from YOU in the past few months.
Every generation has its own personality and yours was sadly shaped quite a bit by a pandemic. Your millennial parents spent their young adulthood watching an unending global war on terror. Maybe some people they knew were deployed and they might have wondered why people on the other side of the world hated us. People my age worried about nuclear war and AIDS. But our stuff was pretty generalized and didn’t come with the reality of our own dads being put out of work, or our own grandma dying alone behind a mask, or the price of food sending our families into near bankruptcy.
So here’s what I see. Even though we roll our eyes that you are overly attached to your devices and never touch grass, you do have a sense of community—even if it’s not rooted in the IRL world. You guys care about people you’ve never met, and donate to obscure GoFundMe pages because someone has a need or wants to do something cool.
You show love to each other without embarrassment and talk about Jesus without hesitation. Five seconds later you call each other names that would make your parents and grandparents pass out from politically correct shame. But your clapbacks7 don’t come from malice or darkness — they’re just part of your oddly-sweet dynamic because you see each other as “same as me.” I think you may be the first generation that lives like equality is just the default state of being.
I also see, when you set your mind to something, it will happen. Sadly, for some of you, that means “I hate school and can’t wait to get out.” I get it—you started life with a lot of stuff and permission to do whatever you wanted. Then the world let you down and gave you a perspective that people who govern you don’t value or care about you and they hate each other. There’s not much allowing you to have hope or show you that effort has meaning. But your gifts ARE real, achievement is a blessing, and success is still possible. I know there’s nothing a substitute can do in a day to fix that but now that I know you better, I can wrap my head around your smol8 perspectives and figure out some better ways to be lit.9 Have a nice summer!
BROOKLYN: Oh, Miss Poppy, you’re so boujee!