Inconvenient Memories

Memory is an elusive being in humans. Information is stored easily, but can be lost even easier, especially in the elderly. At the other end of the memory loss spectrum, there is the teenager. This mythical beast is fabled to be found on high school campuses everywhere, as well as malls and any place with a readily available supply of food. A recent study has show that these creatures have an incredible ability to retain information for academic purposes, but seem to be deficient in retaining the more elastic emotional memories of years past.

These creatures come in several varieties, but there is a significant divide between two specific classifications: the "upperclassman" and the "underclassman." The underclassmen often carries the burden of being lesser in years, maturity, intelligence, "coolness", and the ability to relate to others. The upperclassmen, however older and cooler than their younger counterparts, seem to easily forget that they were once an underclassmen.

The upperclassmen have conveniently forgotten that once, often less than two years in their past, they were underclassmen. They conveniently forget that they once were frightened of the large school filled with large people, and that they were once small and fairly insignificant. The upperclassmen conveniently forget that there was once a time before they got their driver's licenses when their mothers had to drop them off at football games and pick them before eleven. They refuse to recall memories of not knowing the cheers at the football game, and the pain of the jeers of "FRESHMAN, FRESHMAN" when they wore the wrong color shirt to the game. The upperclassmen of the female persuasion conveniently forget that they were once scrambling for a homecoming date and flirted shamelessly with every boy in the school. The memories of being awkward around the ladies is easily forgotten by the males, in the same fashion that memories of their equally awkward underformed bodies are conveniently left unremembered. The upperclassman fail to recall their awe at their pulper, real food in the cafeteria, and the sudden freedom to chew gum in class. The very things that upperclassmen often ridicule the underclassmen are the very things they were ridiculed for. They leave memories of talking loudly in the library, yelling in the cafeteria, and screaming in the halls unrecalled, replacing it with memories of being the coolest freshman class to ever enter their place of academia.

The upperclassmen conveniently forget the inconvenient memories of being the socially awkard banes of previous upperclassmen's existence and only allow themselves to recall the fact they aren't an underclassman any more, thus making it their duty to inform the current underclassmen of their incompetence at being alive.