09.28.08

High School Confidential

Posted in Ponderings at 4:31 pm by Adriene

Maybe it’s because I’m a mere four months shy of 30. Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading melodramatic teenage novels. Or maybe it’s because I’ve gotten back in touch with a lot of people via Facebook over the past few months, but I’ve been thinking back on my high school years a lot lately. High school was a necessary evil to me. I knew I had to get through it in order to get to college, and that’s pretty much why I was there.

I was never cool or popular, nor did I really have any desire to be either of those things. I had a smallish group of close friends, and we were all pretty much those who didn’t quite fit into any of the usual groupings you see. Maybe that was the bond that held us together - we weren’t jocks, we weren’t goths, and we weren’t super-geeky. We all seemed to have class together, but our performance in those classes varied widely from those who always made straight A’s to those who really didn’t give a rat’s ass as to why they were there (I fell somewhere in the middle). We had pretty widely varying political and social ideas, and those led to some pretty heated disagreements on occasion, but we were friends, and we were there for each other.

I didn’t date much in high school, either. I only seriously dated two guys, the first of which was a SPECTACULAR failure and a cautionary tale about why you should listen to people if both your parents and your friends don’t like the guy (suffice it to say that having a rich daddy doesn’t mean you can buy yourself a personality). The second wasn’t so bad - it just wound up that we were better off as friends, and we’re still friends today. I went to prom with guys who were friends both my Junior and Senior years. I’d known most of the guys I went to high school with since elementary school, so I guess it was just hard for either me or them to see the other as anything other than an acquaintance. Plus, I had a bad habit of telling guys when they were acting stupid, and apparently they don’t like that. Oh, and there was that one time when I jokingly told a guy I was a lesbian and he believed me, heh.

As an only child (and a girl to boot), my parents were probably a little more overprotective than some of my friends’ parents were. I had the earliest curfew of any of my friends (10:30), and Mom and Dad refused to budge when I begged and pleaded to extend it to 11:00 (I believe my dad told me “Someone’s got to go home first. Might as well be you.”). Luckily, my friends were pretty accommodating and willing to take me home so I wouldn’t break curfew, and Mom and Dad were pretty cool about letting them hang out at my house until they had to go home if they wanted to (and on occasion, they let me stay out a little later if I called and told them I was just down the street). Of course I thought my early curfew was monstrously unfair back then, but now that I have daughters of my own, I’m sure I’ll be as strict as my parents were. Besides, I think I turned out okay.

There are a few things I wish I had do-overs on, of course. Those of you who didn’t know me back then may find this a little surprising, but I had a hard time sticking up for myself. I wish the backbone I grew in college had come in a few years earlier, I guess. I also wish I hadn’t been so willing to walk away from situations rather than confront them, especially with regards to friendship. I also wish I was a bit more willing to laugh at myself and not be so melodramatic back then (but what former teenage girl doesn’t?).

In all, though, I’m at the point now where I can look back at high school and see where my experiences there made me into the person I am today. I learned a LOT during those years, about myself, about friendship, and about God. I won’t say I’m willing to go back and do the whole thing over again, but I do have some fond memories of that time. I hope in another ten years, I can look back and say the same thing. Though I think I’ve had much more fun in my twenties than I did during my teen years.

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