Welcome back! We are now officially on the home stretch of our school year. This is the fourth quarter and you still have time to finish strong and to feel good about your school year. I hope you had a good spring break whether you went away or stayed at home. I did a bit of both with a visit to see my grand- daughter Sidney in North Carolina as well as time to just hang out here in Rochester.
One thing I like to do during breaks is to watch movies and this time I got the chance to see one of my favorite “coming of age” movies from 1985. It’s called, “The Breakfast Club,” and it launched the careers of many famous actors. It is the story of 5 teenagers thrown together to serve Saturday detention with a hostile school principal. The five know each other but are all from different cliques. One is an athlete, another an airhead, a third a basket case, a fourth a criminal and the fifth a nerd.
During the 9 hours of detention, the students go from hating each other to distrusting each other, to opening up to each other, to finally worrying that when the day is over they’ll go back to behaving the way they did when they first walked in the room. In one of the most telling conversations at the end of the film, one of the girls says to the other, “Why are you being so nice to me?” The other’s answer is, “Because you’re letting me.”
We have so many chances to let people into our lives every day. I’m not suggesting that you let in everyone, but I am urging you to be willing to trust, to be willing to let people be nice to you. You will find that you are capable of having many different kinds of friends and with each you will add to the richness of your world.