High School

High school was actually not that bad, especially considering how weird I looked in an overwhelmingly non-weird school - PAH. I think it's funny that three of my past five roommates have been PA guys, probably just the sort I would have hung out with back in the old days.

I was not part of any clique or group in high school. I felt like I had very few common interests with anyone around me. That said, I had a small group of friends with whom I was very close, but even this group had little in common. I think we were brought together based on our weird senses of humour alone. Despite the fact that we've all grown apart, I wouldn't have traded those friendships for anything.

I could (but won't) whine about elementary school and early junior high being shitty but I have to say, high school was pretty unremarkable for me. One weird thing about our group was that there were no girls. This was by no means deliberate. I don't know why it worked out that way. I think I was really intimidated by women for a long time. Friendships with girls were severely punished by boys at my elementary school, which probably had something to do with it. That + hormones = fucked up situation.

With no females in my small group of friends and next to no strange-looking, punk-rock-listening girls at my school, period, I was left without a lot of options for teenage crushes. In grade ten and part of grade eleven I liked this girl who seemed down with metal. She mentioned an AC/DC song in her yearbook write-up. I was super-into her, but of course I'd never have the nerve to go up and introduce myself. One time one of my friends put some sort of love-note on her locker and signed my name to it, which really made me lose it. I was seriously beside myself, and I didn't even drink back then. I think that ultimately killed my crush on that girl.

Then I got a crush on this other girl. It was so bad I could barely speak her name. I wouldn't make the mistake of letting it slip to my friends this time. As prom approached though, I couldn't keep it to myself any longer. It was sooo bad. This girl had much less in common with me than the last one. She was really preppy, hung with the honours-class crowd, etc. We had NOTHING in common, but that could be said of basically every girl in the school. One good thing, though, was that I had an "in" with her, being in a bunch of the same classes. We e-mailed each other a bit (hey, I'm not that old), and were on a semi-conversational basis. It was not easy keeping it together when I talked to her, to put it mildly.

I remember in one of her e-mails she mentioned liking the band the Grapes Of Wrath. Of course, I was into punk and metal, and wanted nothing to do with that sort of weak indie rock. But when I heard the band was doing a free show at a local record store, I was all over it - thinking she'd be there. Asking her to go with me was out of the question. It was so hard to let her know I liked her, even though it must have been blatantly obvious. I just assumed she'd be there, since she'd spoken of the band in such glowing terms.

Of course, she never showed. And in a bizarre twist, I ended up really liking the Grapes Of Wrath for a long time.

Finally, prom time was at hand. Asking her to go with me was absolutely BRUTAL. I don't know how I managed to do it. I asked her via e-mail, which I'm sure had only existed for about a year. Thank god, because I could never have done it in person. As it turns out, she had agreed to go with a platonic friend just days earlier. I was crushed, and he was my new worst enemy. I'd never met the guy and knew nothing else about him.

Unable to just come out and declare my feelings, I sought yet another obvious hint to drop. I would have to go to the prom and ask her to dance.

So I'm at the prom, putting off the special dance for as long as possible. The end of the night is drawing near and finally, I work up the nerve. I ask her to (slow-...duh) dance, and we dance. To track five of this album.

After the prom, a bunch of us went to a party. It was pretty much all of my close friends, plus some... wait for it... girls. And guess who was among them.

I'd had enough of this emotional roller coaster. I was worn out, and just wanted to get it all off my chest with her. I decided that at the end of the night I would offer her a lift home, whereupon I would spill my guts.

I watched the clock... counted her yawns... waiting for the moment of having to go home... at last, it arrived. And just at that moment, one of my friends looks at her and goes "hey, ya want a lift home on my motorbike?"

How could I compete with that? It's a damn motorbike.

It took me another two years to get over that girl, and I never did tell her how I felt (as if she couldn't figure it out). I thought I'd get a chance to; when yearbooks were being signed, she gave me her phone number. I called her a total of maybe three times. Each time she was about to go out or meet someone somewhere. Ok, I get the picture.

Years later, I attempted to sum up the high school experience in a song with Pop Band 3. I wrote it at the age of 24, so there was definite nostalgia there. As Gary F once wrote, "...memory is never accurate, what was dim can now seem bright..." I tried to highlight aspects I felt especially nostaligic about; the PA Quad (which could still be accessed when I was in grade ten, but had been closed off by the time I'd graduated) and roller rinks (which had become extinct before I even got to high school) to name two.

There was a fair bit of revisionist history in there, actually. For example, I very rarely cut class, and never huffed cooking spray or "wrecked" shit. Although I never reached the point of being shot down by popular girls, I feel the song highlights the absurdity of having liked them in the first place.

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Girls At My High School

Written by me, early 1997. Recorded by "Pop Band 3", spring 1998.

Sitting in the Quad, she looks so fine
I see that girl, I wanna make her mine
But everybody knows that she thinks I'm a creep
And her boyfriend wants to pound my face into next week

So I'm going straight to Wheelies when I get home from school
Cause the roller skater girls always look so cool

I'm gonna walk - I'm cuttin' history
I'm gonna walk - that's how it's gonna be
I'm just hangin' out checkin' out all the girls at my high school

I got my No-Stick Pam and a brown paper bag
'Cause economics class is really a drag
I wanna hang around where the prom queens go
But all they do is laugh at me, oh no no

So I'm gonna get a car and when the top comes down
I'm gonna have fun, gonna wreck this town.

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So yeah, that's 34-year-old-me quoting 24-year-old-me singing about being 17-year-old-me. I kind of want people to hear that band, but I don't want to make a __space for them, hence their sporadic appearances in this blog.

But yeah. High school.