Remembering High School...

High school was strange for me. My recollections are surreal. Like maybe, it might be something that actually happened, but I can’t be too sure. I think of the sights, the sounds, and my distorted view of the world at the time and I wonder if MY reality was actually THE reality.

The high school I attended was smallish. My graduating class was 101 students. Most of us weren’t overly cliquish. Sure, we all had our regular group we kept company with, but, except for one or two, I don’t recall bullies or people who acted like they were too good to talk to you. For the most part, you were you and they were them, and that was okay.

We had kids whose families had money and kids whose families didn’t. We had headbangers, stoners, nerds, jocks, cheerleaders and kids who were just trying to get by. But, overall they didn’t give one another a hard time. In fact, I recall seeing more meanness in the local Baptist church than I ever saw at school, and those church kids were downright ugly and bordered on cruel. But, that’s another story entirely and this post ain’t about church.

But now, thinking on it, I remember kids who were different, kids who didn’t seem to have as much of a crowd as the rest of us, kids who seemed to keep to themselves. Maybe I don’t recall the teasing because I wasn’t a part of it. I wasn’t on the giving end and I wasn’t on the receiving end. I question my perception of the reality I chose to see at the time.

Is that just my ability to go back and look at it with adult eyes, rather than the eyes of an idealistic and naïve teenager? Because it didn’t happen to me, does that mean it didn’t happen? Are there some out there who now look back and think of hell on earth when they think of high school?

I don’t know why all this suddenly seems to matter now or why I suddenly chose to think on it. I can’t change it. I can’t fix it. Besides, I’m not even really sure what version of “it” is even real. Maybe it’s wondering what mark I left on the world back then, or if I made any mark at all.