I love teenagers

Seriously.

On Thursday evening, I went to SPAF (spectable pour aider les finissant(e)s), a fundraiser talent show that showcases the artistic abilities of the students at my alma mater, De La Salle. DLS, we were always proud to note, is the only French-language arts school in all of Ontario. I hadn't been to SPAF since my last year of high school, but a dear friend of mine—from high school—is now teaching there, so we thought it would be fun to attend. Five of my six best girlfriends from highschool, along with our token male friend, met at our old high school for the big event.

The old clichés still hold true: the place felt familiar yet smaller. It felt foreign but oddly comforting.

Kids were running around, flushed and busy with the execution of the big night they'd been planning for months. Kids in funky hats. Kids with piercings. Kids with normal clothes. Kids that looked like the kids from 1996.

The show itself was fun. The numbers were rather uneven, but it didn't seem to matter to them. The very talented stage band kept it all together: they played everything from hard rock to blues to funk to ballads. And then there were the various dance numbers, some strong, others less memorable. And the various bands and à capella singers. And visual artists showed their stuff in fun and innovative ways. There was even a young woman, whom I assumed is in the writing program, who recited a strange yet heartfelt ballad accompanied by a guitarist.

The evening had been about homecoming, but the feeling of coming home struck me in an entirely different way than I had expected.

As I watched these young people perform, I felt their energy and I remembered, more through my gut than in my mind, how it felt to be that age. Teenagers have this amazing exuberance, this verve that overflows from their lanky bodies and out into the audience of whoever is willing to sit down and listen for a few minutes. They are visibly trying to figure it all out, physically and emotionally, and so they create, create, create. Their world is small but it is expanding at an alarming rate, and so, too, are their minds.

I not only witnessed their aliveness, but I caught a bit of it myself. I was lucky to be a witness to what those kids had to share, even the painfully bad stuff. Their enthusiasm and even their angst seeped into me, and I brought just a little bit of that home to inspire me in my own art—of writing, of living, of being.