Something about being a slacker has always been a romantic idea in my head. I am not talking about the literal evading duty definition of a slacker but the culture of being carefree.

Many factors led into my fascination with the slacker subculture, but film is the biggest culprit. The classic film slackers such as The Dude, Wayne and Garth, Brodie (look into “Mallrats” for more on the basis of my existence) and Randal Graves helped me define who I was, or more accurately what I wanted to be in life.

Before I entered high school I never really felt like I had any defining characteristics. In an attempt to try and define those characteristics I modeled my life on these film characters. This attitude on life can seem a little pathetic, but without copying other people’s habits we would just be uninformed savages pooping on the ground for lack of a want to use a better term.

What attracted me to these slackers was their outlook on life. The slacker code dictates that you do whatever you want despite what a person in a suit tells you. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean watching reruns of “Viva La Bam” until you die from eating too many quesadillas, but picking and choosing tasks to get to a place where you are comfortable with no advancement. These classic slackers never had the nice cars or the expensive houses, but they got more out of life in a day then an aggressive capitalist got in a lifetime.

I found this mentality is what made me enjoy high school as much as I did. I never sought to be the president of the young economists or in the top percentile. I just tried my best to never let anything I did not enjoy doing get in the way of something I enjoyed doing. In a very postmodern sense, I saw no reason to exist if I did not enjoy my existence. I realize that listening to Tom DeLonge tell me that aliens exist does not stack my résumé, but I’d take Blink-182 over Gordon Gekko any day.

Another element of the slacker mythos I hold close to my heart is to not take anything too seriously. I have always had the want to do my work to progress past high school but never overextended myself to getting an A in Honors Cloning so I could raise my GPA. Anyone wearing a tie would most likely tell me that this mentality leaves me with a dim future, but I would rather not be able to afford a Rolex than drive myself to the point where I am smashing the company printer with a bat in a field out of frustration.

Slackers get a bad reputation. I have completed high school on the classically slacker grounds of doing it my way. My best advice is to do what you want. Orson Welles said, “I don’t say we all ought to misbehave, but we ought to look as if we could”. Take a breath and just live a little.