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Reminiscing
2004-11-19 - 4:04 p.m. I was reading some teenager's diaries today, nobody I've read before, just picking diaries at random. I found it really sad that every one I read hated high school with a purple passion. These kids sound miserable, and I've no reason to believe they're not sincere. It made me realize that I had a pretty good high school experience, especially after I transferred from the Catholic high school 20 miles down the 0hio River from my hometown to the public high school I could walk to every day. There was nothing inherently wrong with the other school; I think I was just fed up with parochial schools and dreaded the looong bus ride to and fro every day. It also made after school activities a fuckin nightmare. I felt so much more at ease at the public hs. It was definitely the right decision for me. I always hung with the popular kids, although I wasn't a cheerleader or majorette or homecoming attendant. People always just liked me. Senior year I was nominated for "Best Personality," but lost out to this girl named Rosie. I didn't care; I voted for her too. She really was sweet, while I was more funny / goofy. During my senior year, my mom went to Louisiana to get married, and I stayed at home in 0hio and had a week-long party at the house. Although I missed my 20-year high school reunion, I was told by a friend my party was still talked about. I remember waking up one morning and going into the bathroom to pee. There was a guy sleeping in the bathtub. Fully clothed, no water, had him a pillow and blanket and all. My party was the hit of the year. Guys who had graduated as much as eight years before me showed up, bearing alcohol and drugs. The guidance counselor who lived across the street called the cops three times. That pissed off the football team, and they went out into the street and mooned him and his wife. My mother had quite a little talk with me when she got home! Another fun thing we did was go over into WV to the bars, because 0H was a "21" state for drinking and WV was an "18." We were 5 minutes from WV, just across the 0hio River, and we all had fake IDs. This was in the late '70s, early '80s, before all the states had photo IDs. A 16-year-old can look 18, but 21 is a bigger hurdle. So we hit all those bars like they were going out of style. There was this one we all went to on Wednesday night for "Beat the Clock" night. It opened at 6, drinks were $.25, and went up a dime every hour. Ladies paid no cover charge, so you could get absolutely snockered on, like, $3. And dance! Honey, we tore up that dance floor! Donna Summer's "Bad Girls," "Ring My Bell," "Rapper's Delight" and all those nasty Funkadelic grooves. And Parliament, George Clinton was the absolute shit!!! I won second place in a dance contest to the song "Born to Be Alive" dancing with this guy, Dean, who had to have been about 35 at the time. He was harmless, just liked to dance with young girls. I won a $50 bar tab, which at the time, and at Beat the Clock prices, lasted forever. That was also the time of Quaaludes. The 'lude dealer was the guy who woke up in my bathtub. He was a mulatto guy (white mama, black daddy, supposedly the son of an Olympic wrestler, but who the fuck really knows). He vaccilated between being a doper and a jock. Those distinctions used to be a big deal at my high school, with rivalries and predictable fights breaking out between the groups, but by the time my class got up to 10th grade or so, the lines were so blurred that nobody gave a shit anymore. Almost all the jocks partied, and even the ones who didn't went to this bar, because (duh!) that's where the women were. But anyway, he was the 'lude connection, used to command a booth and sit there with various women, his eyes slitted, taking your money under the table, then blatantly rolling your ludes across the table to you. He and I were close friends - we'd drive each other home sometimes when the other was too fried to see. Sometimes it was a group effort! Then there was this gravel pit waaay off in the country we all called "B@re @ss." They used to have "b-ickens" there, unsupervised wild parties that lasted for days on end. People dove naked off the side of cliffs into the blue water. How nobody cracked their heads and drowned, I've no idea. But it was fun, yeah. Another thing we all loved to do was go to the dam and set up a party area there, playing guitars, building a campfire, singing, smoking dope, passing the bottle, laughing, kissing, telling each other we'd always be that close, yet somehow knowing this, too would end. OK, I guess that's enough of my stumble down memory lane . . . �
still here - 2009-12-18
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