The

The I don't miss much about being a teenager, but one thing I do sometimes miss is just how fun it was to be a teenage zealot.

The world, at the turn of the millennium, seemed to my eyes so deserving of skepticism.

The war on terror, bullshit. The oil companies, they were bad. My suburb, maybe worse than both of them.

George W. Bush was obviously the worst president America was ever going to have, assuming it even

survived him. I think I thought then that most of the adults I knew had just been compromised somehow.

It almost felt like maybe adulthood itself corrupted you.

Something about corporate jobs or paying taxes or maybe an actual invisible toxin in the

suburban air muddied your vision.

So you lost the X-ray teenage clarity, me and my friends all had.

That's how I saw it then.

Today, in theory, I think both sides have a piece of the truth,

the young and the not-so-young.

But when I meet actual teenagers, I will admit I'm kind of astounded by their withering

skepticism, their iracular pronouncements about what's bullshit and what's cringe.

Was I really like this?

Is it possible they see me as out of touch?

Corny?

But I think that's why every year I become a little more astonished by high school teachers. These people who stand up in front of a somewhat hostile audience day after day,

and just try to convince them to care about whatever the evolving adult agenda is. This week, reporter Garrett Graham has a story from one of those classrooms

about a teacher who had a question and who had the audacity to try to make his students

curious about its answer.

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