High School (Aren’t We Joe Cool Yet?)

I’m not convinced I got the most out of high school. But at least I got out.

*****

To be honest, things didn’t change much in high school. The hair of the student body didn’t pose the fire hazard that it used to, but we stayed in the groups that we’d split into as junior high people. I don’t condemn it because it just happens and seems as natural as plate tectonics: huge masses rushing towards each other and one would inevitably grind the other down, but not without rumbling and trembling. It’s not always a wasteland, though; sometimes you find genuinely honest and wonderful people, like some of my neighboring locker-owners. We all had to deal with the peculiar quirks of the school, such as how it was designed for southern California weather (and hence was a series of disconnected buildings) while experiencing a snow-belt reality. I still like almost all of the people who graduated with me, but it was difficult to reach across the group borders afterwards; I have yet to contact probably 90% of my graduating class with something stronger than a rumor.

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We were the Trojans

Somehow, when USC says it, it sounds more threatening.

*****

By the time I got to junior high, I became acutely conscious of who I was. Your shoes never match your pants, no matter that they’re corduroy and no one in their right mind would want to wear ugly poop-colored corduroys, to say nothing of your shirt not accessorizing well with your hairstyle, if you want to call that a hairstyle, standing in front of your locker-mirror with a comb and brush all day and all between periods the acrid wafting of AquaNet on the breeze … I’m sure that most of you know what it’s like.