The “I Don’t Know” Syndrome

Mr. Kahae

 How many times have you asked someone a question and their answer was, “ I don’t know.” Or heard someone asked a question to someone else and you heard that same proverbial reply, “I don’t know”. This syndrome is as old as slice bread. So, how old is slice bread? “I don’t know”. I remember using this same three word phrase when I was growing up in Hawaii so many years ago. I thought it was cool, what a way to answer an adult if they asked me a question, such as, are your parents home, or at work? Why did you hit this person, or why didn’t you study for your finals. Or why did you throw my backpack in the garbage can. What a canned answer, with not much thinking and I could get away with it. I had never heard some of my friends use it, so I thought I was cool. Now that I am an adult and ask my own children a question and to my amazement, they used the same canned answer, “I don’t know”. I guess the old cliché, what goes around comes around, and it has.

Now I have come to the realization that, the expression, “I don’t know” is a persons way of cutting off communications. The words serve as a handy switch for turning the channel on and off at will. When a person meets someone they want to talk to, or whom they have a rapport with, they turn on the tune in to the other person. Otherwise, they remain in the “off” mode.

However, with the youth of today, they have a strong propensity to set their boundaries. And once that is done, they don’t really care about anything outside that self-defined territory. These youths then to think, “No matter what others might say, I am just this way.” And what is this way? I don’t know.

Spotlight -Sheena, Senior class president

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