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that high-school survey
I graduated in 1981.
What were your favorite clothes?
I didn't particularly have any. Clothes were just, y'know, clothes, because of social norms and the convenience of pockets. I never really got the fashion gene, either.
Much earlier on, I had fights with my mother because she wanted to dress me like a girl -- dresses, pink, frilly, that sort of thing -- and I rebelled. But I wasn't allowed to wear jeans, because jeans were for hicks and poor kids. (My, how times have changed. :-) ) I don't remember what I was wearing in high school, so it was probably pretty generic.
What was up with your hair?
It just hung there. I didn't get the hair-styling gene, either. :-) I've almost always worn it as long as it'll grow, parted in the middle, and nothing fancy.
Who were your best friends?
There was a girl named Lori who was a year ahead of me and a very good friend at the time. Sadly, in later years the connection weakened, as we didn't really have enough in common. In high school, being another smart misfit is good enough; once you've been out in the world, you realize that's nothing special. And meanwhile, she went off and became religious in a way that I found difficult to deal with, and we didn't have a lot of long-lasting interests in common.
Where did you work?
Rudy's House of Submarines. For the record, the novelty of "make and eat anything you like so long as you don't interfere with customers" wears off in about a week. My favorite sandwich -- which would have been difficult to ring up due to the way the menu was set up, but fortunately I never had to pay for it -- was grilled ham, scrambled egg, lots of fried onions, hot peppers (the bright yellow ones, not the jalepinos), and melted provolone cheese, with brown mustard.
What did you do after school?
Theatre when in season (acting, lighting, directing once in my last year).
Also something called "academic games", which involved team competitions (regional and national). I don't remember a more-specific name, or sponsor, or producer, or anything like that. (Some of the games were "Equations", "Presidents", and "Propaganda".) I was on a team that went to the national tournament every year, and was part of the winning "Equations" team early on and the winning team overall once. We competed in six games; I was best at the two math games and was not so good at the two history games (which were mostly trivia-based). The same folks also did a game called WFF&Proof, which I didn't play at the time (no one in my school did) but encountered later.
(Is this ringing a bell with anyone else reading this, out of curiosity?)
Our school was very sports-centric, which isn't unusual; the football team got equipment and trips and stuff as part of the budget, but we had bake sales and car washes and the like to pay our expenses. This wasn't really something you did for prestige from the non-geeks, but we didn't care. It was fun, and it nursed my competitive streak without making me confront the fact that I sucked at physical games. :-)
The trips for the national tournaments lasted about a week (including the bus rides there and back), and these were the first things I really did without parental supervision. (Well, aside from a couple weekends of camping with the girl scouts.) I don't know what the rotation scheme was, if any; every tournament I went to was in the southeastern US, though always in different cities, but people came from all over the country to compete.
Did you take the bus?
Yup. School bus, not city bus.
Who did you have a crush on?
Didn't do crushes. You can take my "girly" credentials now. :-)
Did you fight with your parents?
"Fight" as in "argue"? Sure, didn't everyone? "Fight" as in "come to blows, run away, etc"? Not so much. Just the usual teenage angst, which was mostly gone by the end of high school.
Who did you have a CELEBRITY crush on?
Didn't do those crushes, either.
Did you smoke cigarettes?
Eww. Yuck. Did that once to verify, when I was about 14. But my grandmother smoked and I always felt a little queasy around her while she was doing so, so I didn't expect to like it.
Did you lug all your books around in your backpack because you were too nervous to find your locker?
Nervous? Nah; it wasn't that kind of school. When I carried books around it was because there wasn't enough time to get to the locker and then to the next class. I also don't remember now what I carried books in; backpacks weren't yet common. (I got a backpack in college and remember marvelling over the novelty. What a great idea, I thought!)
Did you have a "clique"?
I had a few people I hung around with, but cohorts alone do not make a clique. There wasn't a strong group identity nor was there a sense of exclusiveness.
Did you have a "The Max" like Zach Kelly and Slater?
I didn't know what this question meant when I first saw it. I gather from others' answers that it's some sort of hang-out place like a diner. No, we didn't have anything like that.
Admit it, were you popular?
Heavens no. And once that was established, there was really very little to be done about it, so I decided to not care.
Who did you want to be just like?
I had one teacher I really looked up to, Larry Weed (English). He was kind of rough around the edges, didn't dumb things down, and didn't pull punches. Most of the other teachers tried to make the students feel good even when they didn't deserve it; he didn't play those games. (He would so not be able to teach in the public schools today, I suspect...) He was just about the only teacher I believed would be completely honest with me. And yet he had good relationships with his peers, at least from what I could see. I wanted to learn the skills to function in a no-bullshit environment too.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
I didn't really know, and that was a problem. My father wanted me to be a computer scientist, and I was very good at math and logic, so it seemed like that was what I was going to do. There were things I was good at but knew I didn't want to do -- writing and art -- because I gave more weight to practicality than to dreams and I wanted to be able to support myself reasonably. (Nope, I'd never heard of technical writing at the time; I thought "writing" meant novels or journalism, unless you had an in with a publishing house.) I had gone through a phase of wanting to be a lawyer, but I think that was pretty much over by sophomore year.
Where did you think you'd be at the age you are now?
I'm sure I didn't give it any thought, beyond "presumably successful in some career". To a 16-year-old, 40+ is inconceivable.
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On another note- I have no doubt that having grandparents who smoke would be an effective deterrent for most of America's youth.
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What did you do after school?
(I didn't get this question.) I did a little of everything and a lot of some. I rarely went home on the school bus, not even on Fridays; activities kept me after so I went home on the public bus. Forensics and debate as an underclassman; Scholastic Scrimmage team ("College Bowl" format) as an upperclassman. Chess team, Band and Chorus all four years. Drama as a soph and a senior. Senior year I even made the varsity golf team (albeit as a sub), much to the chagrin of my crapulus teacher since I almost always ended up getting out of her class for meets. Then again, everyone in that class had made it their mission to find completely legitimate ways to annoy the teacher; she was that sort of teacher. (Not a bad teacher per se, just didn't know how to handle *us* and never really tried to learn.)
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Grandparents: my grandfather (the other one, not the one married to the smoking grandmother) smoked a pipe and sometimes cigars. When I was little I thought they smelled good (especially the pipe), while grandma's cigarettes stank to high heaven. My mother, however, objected much more to the cigars than to the cigarettes, though neither of my parents smoked at all. My father, who presumably grew up in a smoke-filled house (I assume grandma smoked all along, not just later in life), dislikes all smoking.
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I haven't been to any of my class' reunions. We didn't like each other when we were in school; why should I care now? :-) I assume that most of my classmates got married and had kids a while ago. Only a quarter of my graduating class declared an intent to go to a four-year college. Some went to trade schools, but a lot just didn't list anything at all for post-high-school education plans.
activities kept me after so I went home on the public bus.
We didn't have useful public buses and the high school was a few miles away (probably 3ish, so I could walk it if I had to). Fortunately, the school ran an "activities bus" that left a couple hours after the regular ones, so I caught that most of the time.
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(She took this picture last year because I needed to send a recent photo with my application for the Sh'liach K'hilah program. It occurs to me that I still don't know why they needed the pictures; I never saw anything that used them. But that's ok; I don't mind having a nice recent photo, and the photos on my driver's license and passport absolutely stink!)
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(My paternal grandfather rolled his own, by the way.)
My Answers
(Anonymous) 2005-01-31 04:35 pm (UTC)(link)Thanks for the inspiration!
(PS: Found your blog through Pittsburgh Webloggers (http://www.pghbloggers.org/).)