April has been an interesting month for the last two years. April 2020, we learned we would not return back to a classroom for the 2019-2020 school year. April 2021, we learned mask mandates would be changing based on the announcement of the new vaccine. April 2022, the Russian-Ukrainian conflicts became even more mainstream, threatening a potential World War III.

With these effects from April to now, gas and the cost of other daily essentials have skyrocketed. The inflated market has been a huge problem for the entire country- but especially high school kids in a small town, like Brewster, New York. To once think that the only problem was actually getting your friends to take your gas money. Now the problem was having a friend with a car, having money to put gas in the car to go somewhere, then having money to do something, somewhere.

Russia is the world’s second largest oil exporting country, and shutting down due to these conflicts was painful to the American economy. Of course, the devastation in these European countries is incomparable but these conflicts have been going on since the Cold War (in my opinion, a war that has yet to end, but thats an article for a later date). The fact that we’ve lasted this long without earlier conflicts between these two European entities is a miracle within itself. A tale as old as time, Russia wants more land and Ukraine wants to stay sovereign, and although a first world problem in comparison, this conflict is making it hard for high school kids to feel some sense of sovereignty.

To put it into perspective, the current BHS senior class had their first year of high school canceled due to a deadly pandemic taking many lives and changing the world as we know it. Their sophomore year was spent half in the class half online but never even seeing some of their virtual classmates faces. Their junior year was semi-normal with faceless classmates and socially distanced extra curricular activities. Finally, in their senior year, the reigns were loosened but now with nowhere to go.

In the summer with gas prices being over 4 dollars a gallon an activity so famous to high school students, that is, driving around listening to music and eating less than nutritious fast food while chatting about who broke up with whom, finding out who’s going to what college, and learning what’s the move for the new homecoming dance (Thanks Kristen!), high school students were unable to do so.

This crucial part of independence has been the light at the end of the tunnel all kids have been dreaming of since early childhood. Getting their license, listening to their favorite angsty teen song (“Teenagers” by My Chemical Romance), while just driving around and doing nothing, with your best friends. In a society where productivity is at the forefront of everyone’s minds, these drives allow for you to slow down, enjoy the company of your friends and feel every pothole you hit in the ancient roads of your hometown.

Only time will tell what happens to gas and the economy throughout the next couple months, and although some blame Biden, the economy would have felt the repercussions of these European conflicts regardless. It’s very American to blame someone else or to rely on other countries for the resources we need. Instead of using our own oil we would rather pay more for the oil across the seas. It’s a process we’ve grown accustomed to since the 19th century, but you would think after the two year long shut down (the pandemic) we would want to grow self-reliant and capitalize on homeland resources. But hey, what do I know?

You would think that when we are having an economic crisis and a labor shortage we would want to do more to keep our resources and jobs in-house. However, we constantly rely on the other countries around us to account for us when it would be better for the American people, and the American wallet to use our own oil from our own soil.
As for me, I just want to be able to drive again.