Journal of Trip to Greece and Italy
T.C.
Grand Tour Journal
Mr. -------
July 12, 2013
Day 1. Sunday, 5 May 2013. Baltimore, Philadelphia.
Thus it begins. The shirts Yo'el organized getting for everyone, which had “Uncle Mike's Crazy European Road Trip 2013” on the front and picture of Greece and Italy as well as “ Carpe Diem #YOLO on the back, were a big hit. Security and boarding were uneventful. This was Jake's first flight. We stayed relatively low the whole time—we never got too high to see cars. For mankind as a whole, flight was a gradual process, moving slowly from a distant possibility to a real possibility to a very rare and expensive and useless fascination to an everyday affair, but for Jake, although he has always expected it, the sensations are still sudden. Why is experience so sudden, but general societal knowledge so gradual, why can there be “collective” experiences, yet other things that you can never feel vicariously? Jake is our test subject.
On the plane, it hit me for the first time how many adults are with us. We had nearly the whole plane to ourselves, but there were no concentrations of kids, just a homogenous mix. Why do we so often distinguish between kids and adults? Is there a real line, or, as society, is it just a continuum? Age in families is generational and hierarchical, but society is now an even distribution. In fact, on this trip there are “adults” closer in age to the kids than to the other adults, yet we treat them as adults—for example, Rachel Alade. They all have some maturity, some rite of passage that clearly sets them apart—it doesn't seem to be just convention because they actually do act differently. I guess Grand Tour is supposed to be one of those rites of passage for Rockbridge students. I imagine that college and your first job are others. So are stay-at-home moms who get married right out of high school somehow different? Or has the legal age enforced maturity on us all? Should that even be allowed for the government to do? I think perhaps
Grand Tour Journal
Mr. -------
July 12, 2013
Day 1. Sunday, 5 May 2013. Baltimore, Philadelphia.
Thus it begins. The shirts Yo'el organized getting for everyone, which had “Uncle Mike's Crazy European Road Trip 2013” on the front and picture of Greece and Italy as well as “ Carpe Diem #YOLO on the back, were a big hit. Security and boarding were uneventful. This was Jake's first flight. We stayed relatively low the whole time—we never got too high to see cars. For mankind as a whole, flight was a gradual process, moving slowly from a distant possibility to a real possibility to a very rare and expensive and useless fascination to an everyday affair, but for Jake, although he has always expected it, the sensations are still sudden. Why is experience so sudden, but general societal knowledge so gradual, why can there be “collective” experiences, yet other things that you can never feel vicariously? Jake is our test subject.
On the plane, it hit me for the first time how many adults are with us. We had nearly the whole plane to ourselves, but there were no concentrations of kids, just a homogenous mix. Why do we so often distinguish between kids and adults? Is there a real line, or, as society, is it just a continuum? Age in families is generational and hierarchical, but society is now an even distribution. In fact, on this trip there are “adults” closer in age to the kids than to the other adults, yet we treat them as adults—for example, Rachel Alade. They all have some maturity, some rite of passage that clearly sets them apart—it doesn't seem to be just convention because they actually do act differently. I guess Grand Tour is supposed to be one of those rites of passage for Rockbridge students. I imagine that college and your first job are others. So are stay-at-home moms who get married right out of high school somehow different? Or has the legal age enforced maturity on us all? Should that even be allowed for the government to do? I think perhaps