The kids, now officially pegged as students from the September to June months, are packing their bags, text-coordinating their outfit and meet-up spot, looking up How To Pass Grade X Math on Google and updating their
I figured that it would blow my tradition to hell if I didn't have something to say on the Night Before School and so I decided I would pretend I was 17 going on 18 instead of 19 going on 20 and do what any high schooler would be doing: I ordered a pizza, watched back-to-back episode of Big Bang Theory reruns, painted my nails with Crackle! nail laquer and spent an accumulative 70 minutes looking for my ear phones and important school documents - both of which remain lost - before finally sitting down to write a blog post in which I get to pour out buckets of complaints and twangst.
For me, school has always been something I dreaded. It was a looming presence in the form of a dungeon in which foresight helpfully supplies the visual of large beefy men wielding axes shackling me to ominous, spiky blackboards covered with spiders and forcing me to deliver a presentation to my entire school on Canada's entire history to the 20th century for days at a time in my bra and panties...Surrounded by brain-hungry zombies. And scary, vagina-burrowing cactuses. Cacti .Whatever.
No, to be honest, it's not that I
a) hate learning
b) am an idiot or
c) have a disfiguring facial feature that causes me to become a social pariah and school laughing stock and as a result have no friends.
I have friends, I'm pretty easy going, and other than the fact that I frequently want to punch people in the face, I get along with most people[it's funny how that shit works]. But I've never had trouble socializing. Really. I just have trouble showing up to get half the work. I also have a paralyzing fear of public speaking. To the point where I'd truly rather hang myself with a cheese string than go in front of a class (regardless of how well I can talk to them one-on-one) and put myself on display.
Now this goes back to my middle school experiences of being unfortunate enough to go through puberty before the boys in my class and therefore have my entirely awkward frizzy, pimply, spectacle-wearing experience mocked and ridiculed. Before that I was the spunky 13 year old who choreographed her own dance and performed it during her grade 5 graduation. I was the girl who convinced one of her closest friends to sing Summertime with me (a song I absolutely adored from my Fighting Temptations movie soundtrack that was originally sung individually by Beyonce in her pre-Crazy in Love days; but sung by two girls at summer camp simultaneously made the lyrics: "when we fell in love, it was the summertime" a lesbionic reality) in front of three entire camps even thoughI had NO singing ability whatsoever. I was also the girl who would pelt you with toy trucks if you made fun of my friends, and who would organize a boys vs. girls pushing game which was our way of kicking each other's asses for fun on the playground and not calling teacher on each other if someone got hurt. I was a pretty top-shit kind of kid. I was not supposed to turn into the girl who would avoid talking to people, who fumbled her cue cards and stammered her way through oral presentations, who let bitchy girls wearing weaves trash the way I wore my natural hair, the girl who walked quickly, spoke quietly, and avoided conflict in order to pass by unnoticed. No, I wasn't supposed to become her.
I'm not so much like that now. Grade 8 and a certain two friends pulled me out of my shadow and help me bitch slap it into submission. I was louder, crazier, and happier than ever. Perhaps I was even toeing the line between teenage rambunctiousness and just plain obnoxious. I gained a reputation as being an annoying part of a threesome (and who was late for everything, who always had something to say, and while getting good enough grades, tended to throw together half-arsed work at the last minute. We kind of were something to see. But it would still take years to slowly pull off the sticky, self-conscious coating that had latched onto my skin like a tween at a Justin Bieber concert. It took time to individualize my iPod music, to wear whatever the fuck I wanted (even if tank tops and jeans became my trademark outfit for years until I started working in retail), to walk with my shoulders back and my head tall - peacocks ain't got NOT nothing on me.
| This is my outward reaction to being assigned a presentation. Body begins self-destruct mode. |
But seriously, me and oral speaking is like vampires and garlic toast, you just can't put that shit together. My heart rate increases dramatically, I start to sweat like a 400 pound man doing hot yoga, my jaw fucking dislocates and my entire body decides to light up like a live wire and starts twitching like I just decided to go off a decade-long alcohol binge cold turkey. The combination of symptoms means my brain decides to pack a bag and vacation on another continent and so everything coming out of my mouth is utterly useless and I end up sounding like a beach whale trying to learn Spanish and my face gets hot and my heart climbs up my throat and tries to claw it's way out of my mouth and my legs are trying to run but are glued to the floor and my teachers' brow is looking all furrow-y and disappointed and from all the way at the front of the class I know for DAMN WELL SURE that I am not gonna be acing this so I visualize putting myself and everybody else out of their misery and just shooting myself in the head because then at least then the class can entertain themselves by sliding and frolicking in the remnants of my brain mush instead of listening to me drone on about mining and the environment and am I STILL FUCKING TALKING?
And that's the way the cookie goddamn implodes.
People can say I'm looking at school with a negative perspective, and I wouldn't disagree with them. But I would like to helpfully point out that being a student who is going into her 6th (nearly) consecutive year of high school, wouldn't I know from experience just how shitty it actually is? Most likely, the other person in this conversation has been out of high school for at least 20 years and whose rearview mirror is probably foggy and therefore cannot POSSIBLY conceptualize how close to fucking hell high school was for them. It may be easy to look back fifteen years when you've already put your swirlee and getting mooed at in the cafeteria and oh, that time you got your period on your brand new baby blue fitted track suit bottoms (personal hell, bro) in the middle of class...
It is not 'the best years of your life' and I don't know who was quoted saying that but that dude probably hasn't shown his face since then out of fear of being publicly stoned for being a misinforming prick.
Think of high school like walking under a magnifying glass, so that every one of your faults; the space between your teeth, your arm chub, your proclivity for badminton, your unibrow, it's all on fucking display for the people around you to pick up and use as ammo for their sling shot. It's all about fitting in, and a lot of the time that means at the expense of others. It does get better in grades 11 and 12, but 9 and 10 are breeding grounds for tarts, wannabe gangstas, some of the most gory butchering of the English language known to man (Shakespeare can be heard weeping from his grave), and hordes of posturing, swaggering boys and lipsticked, trampy, extension wearing girls all swarming one another trying to simultaneously show up one another and get in each others pants.
It may be a place of learning, but high school has to be the most unique, crucial, and telling experiment of social development in life...Anthropologists in a high school would be like racoons at a trash dump; they'd be falling on top of each other and schmoozing all over the shit they could uncover...We are at the most precarious stage of our lives. Our decisions - not that we realize it - will determine what we do and what kind of adults we become. The way we interact and socialize in such a small environment is like a microcosm of greater society, and even humanity in general. Of course, most of us mature a little bit (thank god) but still. We are all learning, growing, and discovering and influencing one another during our 10 month school year. We spend more time together than we do with our own families if you think about it. So positive or negative experiences should be acknowledged as more than a thing in passing; high school makes up a huge chunk of what our lives are about despite what we want to admit. So if your kids' high school experience is shitty, most likely his entire life feels like its in the toilet. It's not pessimism, it's realism.
I am looking at tomorrow as the LAST first day of my last year of high school I will ever have. Does that make sense? Third time's the freaking charm, right? Get in, get out with a minimum of stress, hair-pulling, and presentation-induced fainting. I'm ready to go. Wish me luck.
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