In high school, I didn’t start skateboarding and I didn’t join cheerleading. But I did go through my own existentialist phase.
By the time I was taking A.P. tests, I had read most everything Albert Camus had published humously and posthumously. But like a skateboarding teenager, I knew deep down I was a fake. I mean, how much could I understand about existentialism if my mom had to drive me to Borders to buy The Last Man?
But for as little as I got existentialism, all those French translations have burrowed their way into my brain. And my limited grasp of the theory has become a foggy lens through which I see the world.
It’s funny how pretense plus time equals reality. The high school skateboarders who keep it up through college become real skaters, not just posers who buy their clothes from