Perspective: What do they know?

Today's senior class members once marveled at the magic of the Teddy Bear Museum, in the building that now is a day-care center for the YMCA on Pine Ridge Road in North Naples. (File 2)

Photo by JASON EASTERLY
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Bill Barnett has been Naples' mayor since the Class of 2011 was about the age of these schoolchildren he escorted through City Hall on one occasion in 2008.

A look into the mind-set of this year’s class of high school seniors in Southwest Florida

What are they thinking? How do they fit into the community and these times?

This list of chronological and cultural milestones may give some insights into the incoming Collier County high school Class of 2011.

This is a takeoff on the popular “mind-set list” compiled each fall by Beloit College in Wisconsin for each freshman class. For example, this year’s Beloit list says Korean-made cars have always been commonplace on U.S. roads, wrist watches have always been optional and vampires have always been part of the pop culture.

What local features, personalities, brands or landmarks have our own teenagers always known? Or never known? What makes their life experiences distinct from all others in the past or to come?

Here is our list. Special thanks to Daily News colleagues Jim Lockhart and Harriet Howard Heithaus for their contributions.

Let’s see yours.

Enjoy — and please share with a high school senior near you.

— Jeff Lytle, Perspective editor

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For the Class of 2011:

n There has always seemed to be at least one big drug store at every major urban intersection.

n Bayshore Drive in East Naples has never been known as Kelly Road.

n United Telephone and Palmer Cablevision have always been meaningless/unfamiliar names

n There has always been a casino in Immokalee.

n The Boston Red Sox have been in or near the World Series for as long as the senior boys and girls have been playing ball themselves.

n George W. Bush is the only Bush they can remember being in the White House, and they remember someone by that same last name as governor of Florida.

n Downtown Naples’ Fifth Avenue South has always been built up.

n Collier County’s beaches have always been nice and wide in most places.

n There have been two Ritz-Carlton resorts on Vanderbilt Beach Road for as long as they can remember.

n Collier County commissioners Donna Fiala, Jim Coletta and Fred Coyle have been in office since they were in grade school.

n The same goes for Steve Donovan on the Collier County School Board, and the supervisor of elections, clerk of courts and property appraiser.

n Ray Judah has been a Lee County commissioner since they were born.

n America seems to have always been at war.

n Short hair has always been in style for boys.

n Marco Island and Bonita Springs have been cities almost as long as they have been in school.

n Stadium Naples sounds more like a ballfield than a political scandal.

n They have always gone to the movies at Hollywood 20.

n The Daily News has always been a seven-day morning newspaper — and a website since they were toddlers.

n Eminem has always been more than a candy.

n They have gone to school under four superintendents.

n Alligators are not endangered, but common, species.

n Max Hasse has always been the name of a park, not a public servant.

n Mosquito control has always been conducted with quiet helicopters and planes, not fog-spewing DC-3s roaring over rooftops at dawn.

n There has almost always been a choice for hospital care.

n On Sept. 11, 2001, they were told the truth — this was the very bad work of some very bad men.

n The Naples/Fort Myers area has always been one continuous strip of development along U.S. 41.

n They have been protected by only two sheriffs, and most of their parents only three.

n They were in middle school when their minority classmates came to make up a majority of the student body.