School is back in Park City.
You can tell because traffic has returned, backpacks have reappeared in entryways, and your children are suddenly interested in belongings they have not thought about since June.
My 10 year old opened his backpack, recoiled and said, “Why does this smell like something died in here and then got hot?”
Fair question.
My 7 year old announced that hers smelled strange, too, and began digging through the pockets. A minute later she held something up.
“What is this?”
It was string cheese. No wrapper. Just the cheese.
“Is that from June?”
She considered it.
“Maybe May.”
We threw it away.
And so began another school year: shoes located, alarms set, backpacks lined up by the door.
Then, the night before the first day, all three got nervous.
Someone appeared in my bedroom after bedtime with a question that had absolutely nothing to do with school, then returned with another.
They are good kids. Fairly well adjusted despite having been raised by me. But apparently you can know exactly where your classroom is, have plenty of friends there, and still need to ask your mother something completely unrelated at 10:17 p.m.
Some things about the night before the first day of school have not changed.
The next morning, though, they walked into a version of growing up that looks very different from mine.
I spend my days in a high school, so I get to watch this from both sides: as a mother sending children into it, and as a teacher standing in the hallway when they arrive.
Teenagers are still teenagers.
What is different is what can happen to a moment after it happens.
A while back, I watched as two students started yelling at each other in a hallway. Nothing remarkable. Teenagers have been arguing in hallways since hallways were invented.
Before I had even figured out what was going on, the phones came up. Several of them, almost at once.
It was no longer just an argument.
There was footage.
When I was young, embarrassment had a limited geographic range. Maybe six people knew.
There is no known footage.
We had cameras, obviously, but they were cameras. You had to bring one. You needed film. Someone had to finish the roll, take it to Rite Aid and several days later collect photographic evidence of your choices in a paper envelope.
By then your terrible haircut was old news.
My students have AirDrop.
Today, grades 6 through 12 put their phones into Yondr pouches for the day. The phone stays with them. They just cannot get to it as easily.
I understand the appeal. Every teacher knows the phone posture: lowered chin, sudden concentration, one hand disappearing beneath the desk.
“Put your phone away.”
“I’m not on my phone.”
A calculator sits in the pouch.
But what interests me more is what remains after the phone is put away.
Who posted something? Who saw it? Who was invited? Who was left out? Why did she look at me like that? Did anyone else see it?
The phone can go into a pouch. The awareness is harder to put away.
My adolescence had its own communication problems.
We had one telephone for the whole family, attached to a wall. If you wanted to talk to someone you liked, you called their house and took your chances on who answered.
“Hi. Is Amy there?”
“Who’s calling?”
If you actually got Amy, you had the conversation within wandering distance of everyone in your family. If you were a high tech family, maybe a cordless.
But when you hung up, it was over.
No screenshot. No recording. No little dots telling you she was typing and then had stopped.
You could replay every stupid thing you had said in your own head, but at least the replay belonged to you.
We had humiliation. We just had less storage.
One of the things we tell teenagers in high school is to lean in. Get out of your comfort zone. Join a club. Try out for a team. Raise your hand. Sit with someone new.
Good advice.
But nearly all of it requires being willing, briefly, to look foolish.
You get better at that by doing it.
You might not make the team. You might raise your hand and be wrong.
That was always part of growing up.
I wonder what it feels like to take those risks when so much of life can feel vaguely filmed.
Not because someone is always recording.
Because someone could be.
I had plenty of bad moments at their age. Bad hair. Bad judgment. Things said with great confidence that did not deserve it.
There is, thankfully, no known footage.
I hope my kids get to say the same.
Although if they do, someone will probably have it on a phone somewhere.
Heather Bryant is a Park City resident, writer, longtime educator and mother of three. She writes educational curriculum and essays on parenting, conservation and the importance of place.