Another Summer That Can’t Be Written Off

Mel is a Goth.

This may or may not be why she prefers Mel to Melody, but it helps explain why her hair is dyed a dull black that matches her dress, and why her pallor matches Dracula’s. She is 17 years old, and one of her favorite pastimes is visiting the dead.

It is strange to drive through the gates during the days after so many midnights of scaling the fences. Pacific Crest Cemetery is nothing special. There are few raised tombstones, mostly just markers that a lawn mower can easily glide over. Filching a few flowers from other graves, Ann and I head towards the newer side of the cemetery. We head for the people we know.

Actually, Mel’s first draft was a little rougher. Her editor suggested “through the gates” in place of “into the driveway,” and “filching” for “picking up.” Next to these changes, Mel offered her own judgment: good. It pleased me that Mel approved of these edits, especially since I was the editor.

Filching flowers from graves is not nice, of course, but I gave Mel a high grade just the same. When working with teenage journalists, it’s encouraging when they understand that some verbs are better than others. But come to think of it, I’ve always found working with teenage journalists to be encouraging, period.

That is how I spent my summer vacation. That is how, in fact, I have spent my last dozen summer vacations.

The cliche would have it that I am “giving back,” but the cliche misses the point. Back in 1973, I spent two weeks at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in a journalism workshop staged by a little nonprofit group called the California Scholastic Press Assn. Those two weeks had no small influence on my life, so now I am among the alumni who have made it a habit of returning as volunteers.

Nobody is paid, no expenses are covered. We pay for the privilege to play drill instructor in this little journalistic boot camp of ours, and we leave feeling a little better about the world, a little more optimistic, thanks to our tour of duty in teendom.

*

The students are always a revelation. I like to think we are more enlightened than to assume that teens who aren’t slackers or nerds must be gangbangers. Still, when Mel arrived in a purple wig, instructors thought: “Uh oh, trouble.” I assumed teens with an affinity for all things Gothic just loved to brood, but Mel proved quite the opposite--”a perky Goth,” as she called herself.

My favorite class concerns column writing. This summer, we ended up with 21 students, which usually means correcting and grading 21 different versions of the same story. In column writing, however, I got 21 different tales--or rather 22, since one girl was so industrious she wrote two.

They are all, in a sense, coming-of-age stories--a snapshot of the mind of a particular young person at a particular place and time. Marites wrote about being a student in a school with a “ghetto” reputation and how her classmates sometimes play up the ghetto image. Terri wrote about her excitement and sense of responsibility as student body president-elect of her Long Beach school (with, incidentally, its “Valley Girl” cheerleaders).

Christine, an academic star with high expectations, wrote about how “humbling” it was to be among students who seemed more accomplished. (Actually, Christine did just fine.)

*

With the authors’ permission, I borrowed a few columns to share with you.

Erin wrote about a friend who had confided to her that he was gay. She continued:

He knew from our conversations that my father is gay, and he knew what my family had gone through. He knew that my father was open, and I think that’s why he came to me. But still I felt an awesome gratitude that he felt comfortable enough to tell me . . .

The friend called late one night, asking Erin if he could come over to stay at her house. She said yes and didn’t ask why. After a few days, he said that he had told his father he was gay.

All I could offer was my ear. All I could do was nod and try to understand a man who would scream and rant at a wonderfully gifted son, who would throw his only son into the street because of something he couldn’t change.

And later, there is this:

When [my friend] left my house three days later, begged back by his mother, all I could do was offer my fear. I wanted so much to be the friend for him that my father never had . . .

*

Tami, meanwhile, shared a different sort of sad story. She wrote about her dream to become a writer, her eagerness to join her high school newspaper.

Just one problem: Her Simi Valley school doesn’t have a student newspaper.

And that is, as the students might put it, just so lame. High school journalism programs are suffering and dying out--a symptom that maybe adults really don’t care that much about the young. High school newspapers, after all, aren’t just a medium in which students express themselves. They mirror the campus and the student body, providing an image parents should see. I’ve known daily newspapers to follow stories that first broke in high school papers.

What a shame it is that parents in some communities don’t have this window on the lives of their children. They can learn something, even if it’s just that Goths can be perky too.

*

This is how Mel ended her story:

The dead do, in fact, tell tales, but in a softer voice than most. They whisper to us that we should enjoy what we have. As long as we remember them, they are alive.

I lean over to Ann and say, “Let’s go bake cookies. I’m sure that is one of the best parts of being alive.”

Ann smiles and looks at her father’s grave.

“Chocolate chip,” she says.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, CA 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com. Please include a phone number.

We leave feeling a little better about the world, a little more optimistic, thanks to our tour of duty in teendom.