... and what have we learned?

Remember Middle School? Or - more specifically - Middle School "Formals"? The idea of boys and girls playing dress up in their older siblings' hand-me-downs and attempting to keep from laughing and/or blushing furiously for 3 straight hours? All literally scrubbed up and given a dressing down by moms and dads ("you had better behave yourself, mister...") and then dropped off with the mother's dabbing at their eyes, and the dad's barely hiding grins and snickers...

Well, no one would tell you, and I doubt any one would actually admit it, but these things were not designed for our own entertainment. Middle School Formals were the first test in a long string of adult experiments and Darwinian exercises that began, technically, with your co-ed sand-box playmates prior to preschool. The test situation - to see what happens when you are dressed and ordered to act like a regular human being, then sent into a gymnasium full of floating pheromones and awkward, uncomfortable testosterone. The hypothesis:
... slowly, with many a red cheek and giggle, you'd realize (not only during the "dance", but in the weeks prior) that there are people here that you... you... you...
.... that you like.

Dear God Help Us, I know.
Sure, there are crushes. Moments of weakness where/when you admit that you think someone in your class is cute - but I'm talking about the angst, the emotional uproar, the squirming animal within that rears its ugly head whenever that person - the oh-so-enduring "love of your life" - dances with someone else. Dare they even look at another person, and you become, whether you admit it or not, capable of murder..
... though only in the name of love, of course.

This is what our parents are looking for - this all consuming (though temporary) emo-whiner lust that proves we are capable of loving.
... Or, at least, that we're on our way there.
High School dances are different. Although I'd like to believe (for my own piece of mind, and/or my parents - I'd hate for them to be traumatized) that adults don't know what kind of dancing goes on once puberty kicks in and we're allowed to gawk at upperclassmen...
... I'm pretty sure that they know they're sending us off to a 3 hour orgy.

If you disagree with me, I have two things to say to you:
1. You are in denial - and -
2. Please tell me what high school *you* went to, and did your parents allow you to leave the house?

Where Middle School allows the awakening of great passion - of realizing that you can become thoroughly miserable over and about another human being, High School just extends the angst and allows clothed sex once every few months or so to keep the raging hormones at bay. By the time you reach sophomore year, you have holed yourself up in your room several dozen times and stared forlornly at the ceiling, wondering why, why, why ____ will never know your name, try as you might to silently (and without alerting them to your presence at all) get them to realize that you truly, deeply, love them.

College, however - that is when they parents truly worry, I believe. They have helped train your instincts to seek out, find, and sustain (or kill) love, and now they can no longer purposefully shove you into situations where you have to come face to face with it. The question becomes, then - are they more worried that you will have unprecedented access to it on a day to day basis, or will you shut yourself away from it, from the world? If you choose the former, you're either a lucky son of a gun or...
.... [cough]. Not that I deal in extremes, or anything.
The latter... is tempting. Your room is small and comforting, like the womb. Your computer gives you all the access to the world that you could ever need - if classes didn't take place across the street, you could snuggle in and "explore" to your heart's content, never worrying or fretting about missing what you didn't want to admit that you were seeking out in 7th and 8th grade in those darkened gyms and cafeterias.
... However... the experimentation taken up by our parents, our guardians, never truly leaves us, I believe. Mice learn to find the cheese with or without the prodding of the lab assistant; we venture out of our comfort zones, out of past issues, out of the dorm room, and often times get hit by love like a brick to the face.

... sounds pleasant, right? Well, actually - it's not too bad. Our parents introduced us to the idea, whether or not we ever became, or become, aware of the strings and the rigging - and it's inescapable after that...

... which is, I'm sure, exactly what they wanted...

... and what, admit it or no, we want, also.