Five Things about Today's World That Would Have Shocked Me in High School

By Jonny Walls

If my hairline has taught me anything (and I think it has), it's that a lot can change in ten years. But there are certain things that are currently true about this world that would have shocked me to have known when I was in high school. Be assured, I don't consider these the five MOST shocking things that have come to be true in the world since I was in high school (in some cases, they are far from it), they are just some shocking things that have come to be true.

5. The Death of Steve Irwin

One may be tempted to call Steve's heartbreaking demise less than shocking, as the man mixed it up with gnarled crocodiles and tangoed with venomous snakes for a living. But the blindness of human perception, at least for me, created a falsely secure view of Steve, not unlike something out of Hollywood. Watching Steve was like watching Indiana Jones: we allowed ourselves to be caught up in the danger of it all, but we never believed anything could really hurt him. When it happened, it rode on a sobering wave of reality that never quite seemed true.

4. The Cell Phone > Flip Phone > Razr > Blackberry > iPhone "Evolution" (Read: Takeover of Society)

When I graduated from high school, I had one close friend who owned a cell phone. One. And he didn't bring it to school or carry it around with him. It hardly ever left his vehicle, actually. I knew a few parents who had had one for a few years, and I had a few other acquaintances with cell phones, but my existence was, for all intents and purposes, a cell phone-less existence. Five years later, more or less everyone I knew owned a cell phone. Now, just over ten years later, its market saturation is complete. I suppose if I had really sat down and thought about it, I would have seen this coming. The evolution of technology is inevitable and the cell phone revolution was poised for dominance at the turn of the century, but in my world, phone communication had always been locked within the parameters of our homes. Voice messages waited patiently at home for me to come receive them. The notion of being always available, not to mention the subsequent and immediate frustration that now sets in when someone is unavailable, would have shocked me.

3. Internet on the Go

This is in a similar vein to the last one, but it is distinctive enough for its own slot. Remember, technologically behind the times as I may have been, I was a "normal" breed of behind the times, the last 33% of society to the party, not an anomaly. The internet was still a rather gimmicky thing when I was in high school. My personal experience had been confined to AOL email, instant messaging, and chat rooms until my junior year, when I first learned how to use a search engine. That notion would have seemed laughable to juniors five years ago, let alone today. The idea of having the internet—this strange, unidentifiable being that came in through the phone wires—in the palm of my hand wherever I went would have downright staggered me. The change has been gradual (although less so than past technological changes), and so the dramatic shift in the way society behaves has crept up somewhat unnoticed. If I had jumped straight from my last...er..."class" senior year to today, and gone to a typical party or social gathering where the majority of eyes were locked in the down position, toward the little glowing screens in front of them, and seen the way we instinctively, even desperately depend on the constant flow of information that they provide, I would have been shocked. The spaceship scenes from Wall-E don't seem so far fetched all of a sudden.

2.  The Death of Saddam Hussein

Again, maybe this seems like something that was bound to happen and therefore unworthy of the "shocking" moniker, but once again the phenomenon of human perception disagrees. Saddam Hussein's name became vilified to the point of legend early in my elementary school days, with the result that I never thought of him as an actual human. He was a myth, a cloud of evil that would always be around. When he became a flat out wanted man, it was always assumed that the chase for him would continue, that he would always be The United States' Shredder: even a trash compactor couldn't kill him. But, like the death of Steve Irwin, although in starkly different circumstances and summoning starkly different emotions, a sobering wave of reality accompanied Saddam's death and reminded us that we're all human, we're all vulnerable. A world without Saddam Hussein was hard to wrap one's mind around, and then just like that, he was gone.

1. The Loss of Pluto

Look, if there is one thing every third grader from the last 300-odd years has known beyond a shadow of a doubt, it's that our Solar System has nine planets. It is one of the elementary mind's great axioms:

2 + 2= 4

E=MC²

George Washington was the first president of the USA.  

The Solar System has NINE freaking planets!

And then science, that unfeeling, analytical monster whose very heart is as cold and unyielding as the icy block of a former planet which it so callously demoted, took it away. Kids, don't believe everything your teachers tell you. It's only a matter of time until it's proven wrong.
Then again, maybe I'm overreacting. Without science, we wouldn't have knowledge of such simultaneously enchanting and educating phenomena as Alchemy, Craniology, and of course, everyone's favorite monsters of yesteryear, the dinosaurs. Yep, I'll always have my dinosaurs, and my beloved personal favorite, the Triceratops...

By Jonny Walls