perceptions
In my youth I think in a way, in a fashion, I tried to appear more smart and more mature than I was. In fact, I did try to appear more smart, more mature than I was. This was my last defense as a nonathletic, underachieving socially maladroit youth. I was not exactly a suck up to the adult authority figures. I butted heads with teachers, I stole, I engaged in breaking and entering, I committed wire fraud. I was not a model suck up, I was not one who made an extra effort to appease the adult power structure. But I felt more comfortable in my encounters with those adult authority figures who acted within the semi-rigid formalities of polite adult society than I ever had with my peers when I was in high school. To wit, my peers were rude, and cruel, and lacked any moral framework at their age to know better than to brutally attack their peers. I was very sensitive to those attacks, and so I found that engaging adults was far less risky than engaging my peers. I cannot point fingers, becau