For whatever reason, this morning I found myself thinking about coming into my senior year in high school, and wanting then to go to Boys State.

I’m not sure why I really wanted to do that back then. It wasn’t that I was a big civics buff, intrigued by government. I found myself chasing extra-curricular stuff at school my junior year, and I just didn’t stop during my senior year. I honestly wasn’t a very politically inclined kid back then, as I still find myself wary of politics now. Still, coming out of my sophomore year in high school, I had an awakening of sorts and shucked my cocoon to just try and to be involved in as much as I could. I had felt pretty substantially that I didn’t belong before then- probably that normal teen thing- so, when I decided to stop caring about fitting in with my peers, and I suddenly did, I jumped all over belonging. And attending the New Mexico American Legion’s Boys State was an honor given to only a handful of seniors at each high school each year, so it was a “why not try?”.

Still, I look back and laugh about the speech I gave to try out for Staters. I was fortunate to be liked by Dave Morris at the end of my junior year. Dave was a senior, a year ahead of me at Eldorado, and he was a Boys Stater that year. And I think he literally co-wrote my presentation with (for) me.

The speech was on SDI- the Space Defense Initiative, which was a hot topic at the time, and I remember after memorizing it and giving it to the guys who would select the Staters for my senior year, they then asked me questions about it, and I don’t remember having a clear cogent answer for a single one of them. I had no idea what I had just spoke to them about. I mumbled and meandered through the post-presentation interview, and then went home discouraged and surrendered to the expected results of my epic flop of the day.

Later that week, I surprisingly learned that I was selected for Boys State by being dressed in a goofy set of clothes and being kidnapped early one morning before school and being driven around the Northeast Heights in the back of a U-Haul for a chilly hour, stopping to pick up other selectees before we were dropped off on campus.

As far as Boys State went, I attended the week of events that was held during the summer at New Mexico Tech in Socorro. We learned about citizenry and statehood and government and politicking and we were encouraged to run for offices, and I ran for something small and lost. I wasn’t as gregarious at State as I usually was at school, and like Robin William’s character’s subjects in the movie Awakenings, at that time I was entering a withdrawn part of my life that kicked up after high school, when life wasn’t so insular and sheltered as it was in high school.

Still, Boys State was a good experience for me. I wish I had learned more about polity and government, but I am pretty sure I spent much of the week wanting to just be liked- returning to a common inclination from my past. How that need has steered around a lot of my life.

We did also receive two Boy’s State T-shirts out of the experience. I cut the sleeves off of one of them and made it into a muscle shirt/tank top, even though I didn’t have a lot of muscle. Still, I always thought it was a cool shirt that way.

I’ve always appreciated Dave for how he kind of took me under his wing at the end of my junior year, assisting me into that experience. He pretty much made it happen for me, largely because he is Dave, super witty and smart, immensely cool, and he was willing to help me realize my goal. I guess that is what a good citizen does.

I wonder what I did with those t-shirts.