Senioritis

Just when you think you're done with high school, along comes a pop quiz courtesy of TheWriteJerry. If someone nearly a decade older than I can remember the 12th grade, I should be able to tackle these questions as well:

1. Did you date someone from your school Senior year?
It was an all-boys school, and I'm not on that team, so no. I'd say I was an even bigger geek as a teenager, so I'm not sure my social life would have been much better in a coed school.

2. Did you marry someone from your high school?
Again, they were all dudes. I'm also still single.

3. Did you car pool to school?
My dad would drive me in and I'd take a train home; the school was a few towns over.

4. What kind of car did you have?
I didn't drive until my Freshman year of college; since my birthday is in November, I was only 17 when I graduated. When I did drive to college I used my father's ‘85 maroon Monte Carlo. God, I miss that tank.

5. What kind of car do you have now?
Black Honda Civic.

6. It's Friday night...where were you?
I had a job on the school's student cleaning crew. For $5 an hour every Friday, I washed every window in the building, vacuumed classrooms, mopped hallways, and once when I got on the janitor's bad side, scraped gum off lockers.

7. Were you friends with everyone or just a certain number of people?
It wasn't my choice to go to that school, and I was very resistant to making new friends. My friends went to the high school in my town, and were living the life I thought I was missing out on. I made one good friend in that school that I still hung out with in my 20s, but for the most part friends were people I nodded to in the hall or split music stands with in band. If I was shy in public school, I was downright antisocial in “prison”. Thankfully, in the years since I've worn antisocial back down to shy or initially shy until I trust people.

8. What kind of job did you have in high school?
Most of my money came from playing in a marching band a few times a year and occasionally doing yard work for an elderly woman around the block. I also had the aforementioned job in my Senior year, cleaning the school on Friday nights. I didn't get into the Italian bands and more steady musical gigs until I was in college.

9. What kind of job do you do now?
I am an Art Director in the area of direct mail, designing ads for various products and sweepstakes.

10. Were you a party animal?
I was in college before I was invited to my first party.

11. Were you considered a flirt?
No.

12. Were you in band, orchestra, or choir?
I was in the band and, sadly enough, I was the president of the band my Senior year. I even got a trophy when I graduated, and since no one was ever going to give me a trophy for anything athletic, I genuinely appreciated the gesture.

13. Were you a nerd?
I was a nerd in public school, and I consoled myself when my parents “sentenced” me to a Catholic high school with the fact that I'd blend in better. I was wrong, and in a building full of guys in suits that would go on to ivy league schools and careers in politics and/or medicine, I found myself a nerd among nerds. I went from being picked on by jocks to being picked on by jocks who were also good at calculus and came from wealthy families.

14. Did you get suspended or expelled?
Part of the reason I was an outcast was because I was that annoying kid who did his homework, kept quiet in class, and followed the rules. Guys would try to get me in trouble by reversing my lock when I was switching books in the unrealistic three minutes between classes, or by turning my desk backwards with me in it when the teacher was writing on the board. I avoided demerits and punishment until Senior year, when one boring Friday night some of the others on the cleaning crew decided to play hockey using a ball made of tape and two mops. I hopped up on top of some lockers and sat there spectating, until we were caught by one of the brothers. The weekend was filled with terrifying anticipation of my appointment in the principal's office on Monday afternoon, but after expressing sincere remorse and offering to have my pay docked for the time spent goofing off, I got away with just a warning. I felt like the stereotypical movie cop who gets shot a week before retirement; I think that incident was only a month before I graduated.

15. Can you sing the fight song?
I couldn't even tell you what it was.

16. Who was/were your favorite teacher(s)?
The band teacher had a cool, dry with. Our French teacher was exactly like the one Alec Baldwin once portrayed in an SNL skit. My math teachers were all cool, mostly because I breezed through those classes with a 99 average. And while most kids didn't like our chemistry teacher, I always cracked up when he'd snap at someone: “Whaddaya askin' me that for?! That's a STUPID question!” He was this grumpy, pudgy old bald man who clearly hated people who didn't understand him, and that was awesome for some reason.

17. Where did you sit during lunch?
I'd find a table along a wall or behind a pillar, eat as quickly as possible, then go mill around the school's courtyard before anyone noticed I'd been sitting by myself.

18. What was your school's full name?
C*******e High School.

19. When did you graduate?
1992

20.What was your school mascot?
I want to say a small plane, because the sports teams were all called “Flyers” and the school paper was a “Tarmac”. I can't recall anyone wearing a plush plane costume, though.

21. If you could go back and do it again, would you?
No. I wouldn't change the things that got me where I am today, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to relive them.

22. Did you have fun at Prom?
I didn't go. I hadn't seen the girl I had a crush on in over four years, so suddenly calling her would have been really weird. Even if she remembered me, she probably would have had a boyfriend by then. It didn't stop me from dialing six digits of her phone number a few times, but it stopped me from dialing the seventh.

23. Do you still talk to the person you went to Prom with?
Again, I didn't go to my prom. Aside from not being able to get a date, I can not and should not dance. People who've seen me drunk at one or two holiday parties know what I'm saying.

24. Are you planning on going to your next reunion?
I don't need to go back there, and most of those dinners are really expensive.

25. Do you still talk to people from school?
I kept in touch with one friend for a while, although lately I only hear from him about once every 3 or 4 years. People grow up, make new friends, form their own families, and get busy with work. I've reconnected with people I never thought I'd see or hear from again though, so I'm learning never to say never. There's not many people from high school I'd want to see again. College is a different story though, and that place was everything my high school wasn't.