High School Reunion Unchained Pt. Two

At some point while in that first year of High School, I realized  High School  wasn’t really working for me.

But there was really nothing I could do about it, because…

well…

I was me.

Things changed when I met Mike. Mike was  our High School’s version of a network guy before there were really network guys in the world. He gathered together a group of us that were not really popular, but were not quite unpopular either. Guys that just liked to hang out and talk about girls and other stuff…but I forget what that other stuff was…

…because we mostly talked about girls.

I still felt awkward in my new circle of friends, but what was nice, was…I could be myself. No matter what, I wasn’t pressured to do anything I didn’t want to do, or be anyone I wasn’t.

And things started turning around. Not because I was any less of a nerd, or awkward, or girlfriendless…but I had a little more confidence.

Around this same time, I also got a job at Wendy’s…which Mike may or may not have had a hand in…I don’t remember. This particular Wendy’s had a lot of people my age working in it. I really enjoyed it, and had a lot of fun.

I remember my first day, wearing my teal and white striped 1800’s looking ice cream shirt, with my stupid flat cap, and my clean and starched apron. My first task was to clean behind the frosty machine. I really wanted to impress the manager, a really thin woman with a lesbian haircut and thick glasses. I spent my time, trying to impress her by cleaning the walls, scrubbing hard, really making it shine. Only to be told, I was taking too long and I need to speed things up…go wash the pots and pans. I did this task much faster, since I cleaned the frosty machine wall way too slow, only to be told: I need to take slow down and do a more thorough job.

The thing I most took away from that first day was:

I need to find a happy medium in the speed I work at and Lesbians confuse and fascinate me.

Which is still true to this day.

I worked there for a year and a little more.

Some other cool things that happened at Wendy’s:

1) I met Rob, who introduced me to alternative music, back before it was labled alternative music.

2) I learned that female coworkers and doing inventory in the dry storage shed led to some really fun times.

3) I found out I was really good at the job, but not in the sense that I was good at working at a Wendy’s, but that I could probably go far in any career I undertook.

4) And once again, I could be myself.

I dropped the drama group (part one reference) and took up journalism. That went much better. I have written about it before, it’s in the archives somewhere on this site, but I don’t know where. It’s not worth digging for, it basically just says: I joined journalism class, didn’t do well until they gave up and let me write what I want, then I did well, and after High School I stopped writing for a long time.

So, in case you forgot (before this got lengthy and off subject), I was debating going to my High School Reunion.

The conclusion that I have come to from all of this nonsense rambling is:

That I would rather go to a Wendy’s reunion.

High School Musical Reunion (minus the Musical) Pt One

I’m about to date myself.

I don’t mean I was going to take myself out on a date, I haven’t had to do that since High School.

Speaking of  High School, my 25th Renioun is coming up.

I’m thinking about going since I didn’t go to the 5th year renioun…or the 10th, 15th, 17 1/2, or 20th High School Reunions.

I don’t know why I’m thinking about going to be honest. I can’t say High School was all that fun, or enjoyable, or even defined me as a person.

The first year and an half down right sucked.

I’m not sure I want to rub elbows 25 years later with people who used to stick gum in my hair and knock the books out of my hands while I was walking to class.

Ha, ha, guy who did that to me, scatering my books and notebook papers all over the hallway….

Good one.

Everyday…

…good one.

My High School was a big wrestling High School, and if you didn’t wrestle….well, you were not cool.

I didn’t have the competive spirit, nor the body, nor the stomach for sticking my face in some other kid’s junk, to really want to wrestle.

My talents lied elsewhere, like being rejected by girls.

I was really talented at that.

At least this was justly deserved, as I was a big old nerd…with a nerd’s haircut, nerd braces, nerd’s slouch, freckles, and my only impressive skill: folding notecards into frogs.

Which to preteen/teenage girls…not that impressive.

So for that, my books and notebook paper would be scattered on a daily basis in the hallways of my Alma Mater.

As well as they should.

Right?

If the wrestlers thought about it though, not really a good recuitment campaign to get me on the blue wrestling tights band wagon. I’m glad that  recuitment companies in the real world don’t use that same technique.

That would be really weird.

I pretty sure if I had joined the wrestling team, I would have had my ass handed to me, plus I’m a little nervous about heights, and I wouldn’t ever be able to do a flip off the top rope.

Which, I’m being told there is no ropes in High School Wrestling, so I guess that was not a valid excuse.

I did sit on the bench of the Freshman Basketball team to try to up my High School sports cred.

It didn’t work.

To be honest…everyone made the Freshman Basketball team.

I sucked so bad at Basketball. I really deserved to ride the bench. I was a pro at riding the bench though. I knew where to sit so as to not get any splinters in my bum, I could take a big swig of water from the sports bottle like I had just played hard…even though I didn’t, and I could cheer and get into a big game hudle with the rest of the team like I was important to the chances of winnig or losing.

I wasn’t.

If and this was a big if….I made it onto the basketball court during game time…like usually the last 30 seconds of the game, and you passed the ball to me, I would probably either:

A) Dribble it until it was stolen from me

B) Pass it right back quickly like we were playing hot potato

C) Shoot it towards the basket, having it fall three feet short of the net.

 

I ran up and down the court like a boss though. And my basketball sneakers were always clean and my socks were always knee high.

So, I turned to theater. Which I also failed miserably. In the fall we had a drama and in the spring we had a musical.

I can’t sing, so in the spring I would end up in the chorus. Sometimes there would be speaking parts in the musicals that didn’t require you to sing, but those always went to the same guy. As a matter of fact, most of the parts in any production we did went to the same people. I would get little tiny parts with one or two lines, which I would rewrite to be funnier or ad lib something during a performance. My enhancements would go over pretty well and the drama teacher would let me keep my new versions, but I’m pretty sure she would have rather me stick to the script.

I’m a more off the cuff type of actor, which eventually lead to me joining an improv troop much later in life, but that’s a whole different set of stories.

The only good thing that I got out of the drama department was I got to snuggle with some of the girls while I was waiting to deliver my one line.

I felt sorry for my parents. They sat through an entire season of basketball watching me and the bench become one. Then they had to sit through 2 hour High School plays of really bad acting so that could hear me say my one ad libbed line.

At the very end they were more than supportive,

“You were great as Soldier No. 4. You really nailed it! So much better than last year when you were Village Peasant No. 2!”

I didn’t have the heart to tell them that I basically injected my lines myself, otherwise they would have been watching me just stand on stage for two hours doing nothing like the wooden trees built by the stage crew.

So scoring big zeros in sports and drama, I tried Art. One of the guys I went to school with could draw cars really, really well. Come to think of it, he could only draw one kind of car really, really well. Which he drew over. And over. And over.

And I don’t think it was an actual in production car. I think it was a bunch of different styles of cars mashed into his ultimate “cool” car creation.

My hand at drawing was simplistic at best. Stick figures having sex mostly. I learned to draw eyes pretty good though…not whole faces mind you…just eyes.

Art was out.

For my music venture, I tried Guitar. I was in the church guitar group for awhile and thank God there was four other guitars to cover up the horrible sounds coming from my instrument. I couldn’t read music nor play any cool rock songs. I was able to successfully get my pick stuck in the guitar hole quite a bit, thus turning the guitar into maraca. If I was smart, I should have invented the Guitaca.

Maybe I still will. I just copyrighted Guitaca(tm) before any of you guys get any ideas.

I left High School with no intentions to look back. College was a much, much better experience.

So what really brought on these ponderings?

A guy from my High School wants to friend me on Facebook. He was neither mean nor nice to me, but he hung out with the book slappers. I remember once he snapped the bra of a big boobed girl in class one day.

I thought that was cool. I wanted to do that so bad, but…you know…not a cool kid.

It wasn’t all bad. Things started turning around towards the end of Freshman year.

I’ll tell why in part two.