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.
ReplyDeleteNylon12 - I am indeed lucky in this aspect and - given the nature of my hometown and the fact there are no other high schools there - it likely to remain the only high school there for as long as the town exists. That said, I can only imagine how odd it would seem to have such a pivotal geographic location in one's young life simply disappear.
DeleteI am lucky - I think I and most of my acquaintances were the "post bloomers" you speak of. But I definitely know of the other variety.
The 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.
Anon - Time really does fly by, does it not? The whole conversation had started because I reminded Uisdean Ruadh that a major decade sort of reunion was coming up. He refused to concede the point.
DeleteIt is remarkable to me that you bring up that point of "fitting in". I completely agree with you, of course - but in those intervening years our whole society has become precisely that way. Adults now are so concerned with "fitting in" with the current social and cultural paradigms - in a sense, we should be completely unsurprised that our society is the way it is: it is just high school angst writ large.
Over the years, I have made contact with some of the "non-regular" folk. The conversations are generally pleasant but quite limited: other than catching up and "remember when", there seems to be little to converse on.
I am so fortunate that two of my high school friends remain two of my best, all these years later.
I am remarkably similar in that I too wasted a lot of time chasing after girlfriends to no avail and eventually married better than I had any right too, at least based off my high school record. Many of my 7 other classmates are divorced or on a 2nd or 3rd spouse. One of my better friends is on his fourth spouse and has children with all the previous ones.
ReplyDeleteOne other thing that I would have changed about high school, which like you was a fairly pleasant and happy time of my life, is to not have wasted my time pursuing sports. I wish I had pursued the arts more when I was that age. I really enjoyed my brief stint in drama club and loved art class but let both wilt on the vine after school and life got too busy.
Ed, I was "lucky" in the sense that I was never good at sports - sure my K-8 school played other local middle schools and I did the rounds: flag football, basketball. But I was always the last guy played and never did any sort of league sports except one fall in soccer - our team lost every game and I was never tempted to pick it back up. Fortunately my parents had encouraged me to take up trumpet in middle school, so when I entered High School I had a ready made group to fold into.
DeleteI hated high school for the most part. I was in a group that hung together so we wouldn't be hunted down singly. I've thought about the changes I'd make. I came up with a few.
ReplyDeleteI'd abandon sports entirely. It actually held me back.
I'd get an after school job at either the FBO or a machine shop.
I'd get my private pilot's license before I turned 18, if possible.
And girls? I married at 19. I'd push that off for at least a few years.
But I wouldn't be the man I am now if I'd done that.
STxAR - Like you note in your consideration, just by changing the past we would change our present and therefore not be who we are. So in that sense, it is only every a theoretical exercise and for me, perhaps why it was so difficult.
DeleteShop class - I regret not doing that now. Or Ag. That would have turned out very useful.
As noted above, I never did sports so not a consideration.
Girls? There is a chance - a small, stupid chance - that I could have married at 19 or 20. I have sometimes wondered how different (likely in not great ways) my life would have been if that had been the case.