Question #5

[fbhjr]

This is in answer to the frozendoll meme I started earlier.

#5) What was I like in highschool?
This is a very difficult question to answer.  I had two friends in
highschool, Ken and Ed.  We weren’t part of any group and fell between most
of the major classifications.
I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone who didn’t think they were a bit of an
outsider in highschool, so I’m not saying that.  And, there were groups I
joined.
I was on the swim team.  But, as I’ve spoken of before, you got in your
lane, you swam your best and you looked at your results.  Not a big
teamwork sport.

I detested any of the school activities that were forced upon us.  The
class dues my senior year were $30.  That was when I was making $3 an hour
before taxes.  So, it was a huge amount for me.
I also thought it very unfair.  I never went to a single dance.  I never
went on the school trip.  I avoided all class activities that were not
mandatory.  But, I was told I had to pay or I wouldn’t get my degree.
So, I paid in pennies.

That cause a lot of trouble.  The class treasurer accepted them and gave me
a receipt.
But, when she dropped them off at the office, the secretaries had me hauled
out of class and brought to the principal’s office.
The three secretaries read me the riot act for making them carry that much
weight to the bank.
They seemed quite sure I had done it just to punish them instead of as a
statement of how much these dues weighed me down for no reason.
Then,  the principal came out to give his opinion.  It was the only time I
had met him.
He told me that my protest was all well and good, but the school refused to
accept my payment and if I didn’t take it back and bring them a better
method of payment I wouldn’t graduate.
I pointed out I had a receipt saying I was paid in full.
He pointed out that the receipt was worth what he said it was worth, and he
said zero.
So I took them back and had my mother write a check for them.
The pennies were in rolls, so I just carried them to the bank and put them
back in.

There are things I did that would probably get me arrested now.
There was a mandatory “Hat day” when you had to wear some sort of amusing
hat to school or get detention.
So, I came to school in a Darth Vader costume.  My friend Ken came as a
stormtrooper.  When we had a free period, we went to the English wing
kicked in the door of our English teacher and marched in.  Ken covered the
class with his “blaster” and I grabbed Mr. Earls by the neck.
“Stop poisoning these young minds,” I said in my best Vader voice.
When retreating down the corridor the door opened in front of me and it was
the head of the English department.  She laughed so hard seeing us she
literally fell back onto the floor.  So, we didn’t get in too much trouble.
(The next summer I had a job picking up trash on the side of roads in
Boston.  Mr Earls commuted down the road I was assigned.  Several times
while I was on the side of the road I’d hear a whole lot of honking and his
car would come right towards me on the road.  He stopped one day to assure
me it was in the same spirit of fun in which I choked him in front of a
freshman class.)

For the most part my friends and I ignored everyone else, and they ignored
us back.
There was one group with whom that did not work.
Each lunch time my friends and I liked to go to the gym and play
basketball.  None of us were good, but it was fun.
There was a group of kids from the other side of town that liked to try and
stop us.  (I’d say they were from the “bad” part of town, but their side of
town was far better off than our side of town.  I think you’d have to
combine the income of all three of our parents to match one of theirs.)
There were about twice as many of them as us, so they’d steal the ball and
we’d have to steal it back.
There were 4 basketball courts and at least as many balls.  Our two groups
were the only ones who used them.  So, these daily confrontations were
avoidable on their part.  We would always try and move to a different court
and use a different ball.  They always followed.
There was one day when it did turn into a fight.
Although they outnumbered us 2:1, we came out of it on top.  Not that we
were great fighters, but they were horrible.  After that they left us
alone.  It was the only physical fight I was in after 6th grade and before
I worked as a bouncer in college.

But, for the most part, I was boring in Highschool.  I went to school, I
did swim practice after school, I worked at the supermarket after swim
practice and if I had any energy left after that, I read until I fell
asleep.

Comments

[cissa.livejournal.com]

I found HS a great relief over junior high (grades 7-9)- in HS mostly people left one alone if one wanted to be left alone. Which I did.

In jr high the bullies fucked with one nonetheless.

I had more of a clique in jr high, but it wasn't effective against bullies. In HS I was pretty much on my own... but the bullies had mostly lost interest.

So I was pretty boring in HS, too.

[cosmicirony.livejournal.com]

I was lucky - in jr high there were two thugs that took a liking to me for some reason, and they made me "off limits" to the bullies. In high school the college-bound didn't have a lot of contact with the vocational students, so I was pretty safe.