High School



That's what it was like going to high school in the early 90's.
(Also, I never knew Screech was a Lennon fan.)



Do you remember high school? I'm sure it was the most positive and self-affirming four years of your life, especially if you were ever different in even the slightest way. My ten-year high school reunion is coming up next year and I have been thinking a lot about it (mostly concerned with calculating whether I can become an astronaut/best-selling author before that night.) I also currently work in a school, so I suppose the subject has been on my mind lately, and now that I am older, wiser, and a little more wider in the middle, I find myself looking back on those days with mixed feelings.

I like to equate high school to watching Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In reality, it's not as horrible of an experience as people usually want to make it out to be. There were good moments and there were many moments we would as soon forget, much like all of Shia Labeouf's acting career after Holes. It was certainly not the absolute worst thing I have ever had to endure (That was Pirates of Caribbean 3), but I'm not exactly eagerly popping the DVD again to relive all the great moments.

High school for me was a fairly standard experience. In the hierarchy between quarterback and that kid-that-smelled-like-eggs, I usually found myself somewhere in the middle. I was never popular, but I wasn't disliked. I was never fully accepted, but I was never truly shunned either. In high school, I had an uncanny superpower to be able to walk into most situations or groups and render myself invisible enough that no one truly cared I was around. Of course, the draw back of that is that no one truly cared I was around. However, in order to achieve this sort of power it meant that -much like Batman- no one could ever know who I truly was.

I was a nerd, but I did my best to hide it. Just like Xavier's pupils I concealed my true self for fear of ridicule and persecution. Worst yet, I did it not because I blasted energy from my eyes, not because I had the power to read minds, teleport, or turn my skin to hardened steel, but because I read Star Wars novels and comic books, because I spent my free hours writing fantasy stories or playing with twenty-sided dice. Instinctively I knew how poisonous that kind of information could be to my social standing. Sure, people knew I had geeky tendencies, but no one knew that all they saw was the tip of an iceberg the size of Andoria. My secret allowed me to be accepted, but it never allowed me to truly connect with anyone either.

Despie what Disney wants you to think, kids, high school
was never like that.

Even to this day when I meet an old classmate or friend I find myself falling back into familiar patterns. They could be over-weight and balding, but I still see them as the person who was cooler than me and I still find myself involuntarily guarding my speech and adjusting my perceptions. Similarly, I ate lunch in the faculty cafeteria the other day and found myself seeing the same divisions among the teachers that I observed from the students, the cool kids, the gossipy table, the rejects, etc. It's ironic that high school is something most of us spend so much time trying to escape, yet no matter what we try, we find it coming back around like a bad plot point.

Still, life is not a sitcom and inevitably we all find ourselves changing. After I left high school I changed, for the better. For anyone still going through the rigors of high school I can only say: Be yourself. As hard as that adive may be to follow or even understand, you'll just have to trust me, because life goes on. In four years you'll realize that the opinions of all those other people really didn't matter at all. So don't take them to heart and don't let them keep you down from trying to be the the person you want to be.

For me I didn't get that till I got to college. I met like-minded friends that showed me it was okay to be proud of who I was, regardless of what others thought, and more impossibly that people would like all the more for it. They proved to me that paradoxes existed. That it is not only entirely possible to be a nerd, but at the same time be the most popular guy in the room. In a lot of ways, they gave me the confidence to be the person I am today, and if it wasn't for them I am sure this blog would not exist at all. I suppose the moral of the story is that high school doesn't last forever and who you were does not define who you will be for the rest of your life.