On my trip to The Ranch, as per usual, I had dinner with Uisdean Ruadh and then our equally usual post-dinner stroll and and talk. The conversation ranged widely as it always does, this time covering elections and state economies and fraternal orders and religion and children and 1960's/1970's space programs and going to Mars.
On the walks through my hometown downtown, we typically pass around and through our old high school. This time, as we were meandering past the buildings and the gym, we began to rattle off the classes we had in separate buildings and the teachers that we had for those classes (rather remarkable how, after all these years, one can still recall a great many of them). This reminiscence kept on as we were driving back home, when in the midst of discussing upcoming reunions and old friends no longer heard from, he asks "If you could change something about high school -anything - what would it be and why?"
I thought for a moment and then told him that was a hard question: for me high school was a pretty good experience overall. I had good friends (at least two of whom I continue to speak to this day, including him), relatively good teachers, activities that helped me blossom - band and drama - and I learned, maybe for the first time, that there other people of my "tribe" that thought nerdy things were just as interesting as I did.
He pressed in more. Surely, he said, there was something. I thought for longer, and then grudgingly came up with two items. The first, I told him, was my obsession with having a girlfriend.
This slightly predated my arrival at high school and certainly extended past it well into graduate school, but for several years - 10 at least - I was obsesses with the idea of a girlfriend. The amount of time I dedicated my thoughts and actions to this, the hours of overwrought agony I put myself through, the mental woes I gifted to myself - energy and time that got me precisely nowhere near that goal (quite literally) but led to my second item:
The inability to consider the impact of my decisions.
In general, I am pretty much a "go along" sort of fellow. If someone suggested an idea or even if I thought of one, I would often just act on it without thinking. Fortunately I had a pretty strong moral base set in place by my parents, so serious crimes and wildly bad ideas (the sort that generally show up in The Darwin Awards) were never really under consideration. But sort of bad ideas? I was just as likely to say "yes" as "no".
For all my "book smarts", I was a fool. And a romantic. And there is little more foolish or dangerous than hopelessly romantic teenager who is always chasing the idea of a girlfriend and is willing to do almost anything to achieve it.
Did it all work out in the end? Sure. I married far better than I had any right to and - eventually - I learned to think about the consequences of my actions and how they impacted others.
But other than those two things, I told him, I would not change a thing.
As we continued up The Hill, it struck me as odd to look back at something and - for once - be pleasantly surprised at good it really was.
You're lucky that school is still standing, the high school my Mom and then I graduated from was torn down back in 2017 to make room for apartments. A steel plant was built there in that part of the city and the necessary buildings, school, housing, stores, bank, clinic were put in by the steel company for the workers in the first two decades of the last century. Some folks bloom AFTER high school, for others high school is their high point and it's all downhill after that.
ReplyDeleteThe high school I graduated from still stands mostly unchanged but some additions. Forty-three years ago (1981) - has it been THAT long ?
ReplyDeleteIf there was any wisdom I learned from high school, it would be given to the desperate souls who want to 'fit in' and have people they admired admire them back. Dress this way, speak this way, be at the same locations as they were. Acceptance with the 'In Crowd'.
What I've learned is that after you graduate, you will not see the majority of them again. Ever. Except accidental meetings or see them in traffic, your effort in seeking acceptance from them was all moot.
Wanting acceptance is fine but no reason to stress out over it. High school friendships are the coolest, next to neighborhood friends who grew up together. Those can last a lifetime.