Who-ray?
Irradiated by Stingray
I’m not going to beat around the bush. I hated high school. Sure, it had its moments, as does just about anything, but the introduction to the wonderful world of pointless bureaucracy, arbitrary regulations, and whim-driven policies, combined with five gallons of hormones per person didn’t exactly make it the shining pinnacle of my existence that it apparently was for some. And on a side note, I believed then and still do that if high school represents the best years of your life, you should probably do everyone else a favor and remove yourself from the gene pool as quickly as possible, and for preference in some hilarious manner suitable for a Darwin award. I didn’t struggle with my classes or any of that, but there were very few people around that I actually liked and found interesting. Combine that with the fact that I was already branded as slightly weird from grades K-8, had plenty of marksmanship medals on my ROTC uniform, and the most frequent phrase used in my English classes was “Go back to sleep, Stingray” after turning the correct answer to whatever was posed to me into a smart-ass remark*, none of my classmates were exactly gung-ho about boarding the ol’ Stingray’s Friend Train.
Needless to say, I did not miss my classmates after graduation. Of course there were one or two people I genuinely did like, blah blah blah, friends 4-eva, etc. I stayed in touch with them on my own. I didn’t get an invitation to the last reunion, and I’m rather pleased with that state of events.
So a week or two ago I was getting breakfast at the local hot-spot. While waiting on the crew to finish assembling my breakfast burrito, someone I went to school with walked through the door. There was really no question who she was, even though the last time I’d seen her was *coughgrumble* years ago. I also remembered just as quickly what a blithering idiot she was, and that she was more than a little vain at the time too. She looked at me for a few seconds while the gerbil tried to engage the wheel in her head.
“Say, aren’t you Stingray?”
I looked around to make sure she wasn’t talking to someone else. “Me? No, sorry miss. My name is Alan.”
“Are you sure? You look exactly like someone I went to school with!”
“Sorry, I went to school in Texas. I guess I can at least thank you for telling me I’ve got a long lost twin running around somewhere.”
“That’s weird, you really look like him.”
“Sorry to disappoint. Have a good one.” Fortunately, my burrito was ready at this point, and I was able to escape.
I should probably work up a better cover story in case they find me for the next reunion. Maybe I’ll call myself Michael Westen.
*That I could do so so reliably and answer so correctly at the same time unnerved one teacher so much that by the end of the year she had resumed smoking after being clear of the habit for five years. I found this out shortly after graduation from the teacher in the room next door.
July 29th, 2009 at 10:58 pm
Stingray, are you SURE we aren’t related somehow because that describes my high school years to a T.
I was ‘caught’ one time reading Sherlock Holmes in my English class when we were supposed to all be reading some story out of the huge book they assigned us. When it came to my turn to read I reached under my desk, pulled it out and said “What page are we on?”
Needless to say, my teacher was not amuses. She went off and asked why I wasn’t reading along with the class and I explained that I had already finished the whole book and was pretty bored (we were in the second week of school).
She proceeded to randomly ask me questions about the various stories and when I answered them all correctly she just looked at me and say “Go back to your reading, just don’t disturb anyone.”
July 29th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Instinct: that was me pretty much from grades 1-12, except I wasn’t particularly into Sherlock Holmes.
July 30th, 2009 at 6:29 am
I pretend to be Alan to get out of things all the time. It’s especially entertaining at work.
July 30th, 2009 at 10:16 am
I have instructed my husband that if we are out in public and someone from my past comes up and says, “Breda?” I will most vehemently deny being me and he should just play along.
July 30th, 2009 at 10:45 am
Heh, High School.
Brings back memories of the word ‘potential’ always preceded by the phrase ‘not living up to [my]…’
Um, I’m acing your two hour finals in 20 minutes. I agree we have a problem here I’m just not sure I’m the one to blame…..
July 30th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Heh.
I utterly loathed high school. The happiest day of my life (up to that time) was my last day at school. I walked around, looking at those white walls, and thinking, “Good riddance!” (and a few less printable sentiments . . . )
In response to Instinct’s comment above: I feel for you, friend. I was the one who couldn’t help laughing like a drain during Enobarbus’ description of Cleopatra’s barge in Shakespeare’s ‘Antony and Cleopatra’, because it was so darn pornographic! My teacher was a mixture of annoyance at my presumption, and curiosity as to how I’d caught on when the others in the class hadn’t. I pointed out that when he was talking about ‘her silken tackle swelling in the breeze’, it wasn’t really all that difficult to figure out what he was getting at!
*Sigh*
July 30th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Only two good things I can think of about high school.
One - it is over.
Two - My car was a 1972 Duster with the V-8 engine and it moved like a bat out of hell. All the asshole ‘rich kids’ were driving those crappy 80’s Mustangs.
Guess who won the pushing contests when everyone was trying to get out of the parking lot after school
Damn I miss that car. Parents sold it on me when I went overseas.
July 30th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
I was really quite lucky, I went to a small, college prep independent school and spent most of my time hanging around the A/C lobby and doing theater, when I wasn’t hanging around the Natural History Museum doing stuff. Consequently, my high school years were rather benign. Didn’t do sports, did a lot of singing and theater which tolerated weirdness and went along with it. With the niggling exception that I was a total flop with girls, it was OK. I’m still friends with one person. The rest I just don’t bloody care.
July 30th, 2009 at 7:13 pm
I cut school so much my senior year that my ‘counselor’ threatened to fail me - until I told him that if he did - I’d come back. That (and a 4.0) convinced him I wasn’t worth the effort.
July 30th, 2009 at 8:39 pm
As for the bit about your high school years being the best years of your life, I’ve never known anyone who agrees. In fact, most people seem to strongly disagree. I can’t imagine who is spreading the idea.
July 31st, 2009 at 6:26 am
I was the fat female nerd - aka target of choice or bully magnet. Then in the spring semester, senior year, I started bringing in all sorts of academic and other awards and it’s “Hey, you’re cool!”
Glad I survived it, it made me a more decent person in some ways, but I wouldn’t wish it on my current worst enemy.
July 31st, 2009 at 6:32 am
As a high school teacher I can tell you that bureaucracy is the raison d’etre for public schooling. Actual learning is an incidental byproduct of the process. After all, public schooling is a government run operation; so what else would you expect? School districts exist to provide jobs for a vast array of administrators. If policies and regulations seem arbitrary, it’s because administrators hold advanced degrees from our teaching colleges. There is no field of study more full of humbuggery, flapdoodle and outright b.s. than educational theory.
Answer the following question: what would you do if your ISP gave you a connection only 50% of the time? And yet in New Mexico we are paying the public school system buckets of money for a 50% drop out rate. Where’s the taxpayer outrage? Of those who do graduate, only 25-30% are proficient in math. My school has managed to bump that percentage to 55%. That would rate an “F” in most classrooms, but we have been recognized as one of the best schools in the state. I can tell you where the problem starts, and it would be simple to solve. Elementary school students are no longer taught to calculate. They are taught to enter data into a machine that will do it for them.
Conclusion: the nation’s public school system needs to be nuked. Nothing less will suffice.
July 31st, 2009 at 6:32 am
The running gag in school was that the teacher would come down the aisle, raise my head off the desk just far enough to slide the test under, come back around at the end of the period and pull the test out from underneath my noggin, and I’d get an A.
This was because I had to nap during tests, as we weren’t allowed to read LotR or AD&D books.
July 31st, 2009 at 7:42 am
Paules commented:
“There is no field of study more full of humbuggery, flapdoodle and outright b.s. than educational theory.”
Agreed - as long as you extend that to include dog training. [sigh]
July 31st, 2009 at 3:48 pm
I got in a fist fight with a guy in the hall about two weeks before I graduated high school. (I lost.) That should give you some idea of how much I enjoyed my high school experience.
I didn’t enjoy college much either, but at least I didn’t get in physical altercations.=p
July 31st, 2009 at 11:19 pm
Ah, high school, wherein I learned to sleep through class and still take notes enough to get an A. Also where I learned to read six books at the same time and keep track of all the plotlines and characters, because the teachers kept taking my books away (so I’d reach into my heavy backpack and pull out the next one.)
The only person who attended the same high school as I did and I still talk to is my brother. As for the rest - well, one of the guys in my D&D campaign turned up on a tree-trimming crew and recognized my mother a few years back. When she told him I was a pilot in Alaska now, he looked wistful and proud that I’d gotten away and done something odd. Maybe I should email him or something, one of these years.
August 4th, 2009 at 11:56 am
Conveniently, I had actually changed my name (first and last) post-high school, so when I was in this precise situation with someone who refused to back down, I actually whipped out ID. “No, I am demonstrably not $OLD_NAME. See?”
August 5th, 2009 at 9:54 am
Instinct: I’ve been there Brother! And it wasn’t any fun at all.
Having attending my 38th (numerical but 3rd actual) high school class reunion last summer, I can safely say that there won’t be a 4th for me. I’ve never seen such a bunch of OLD people in my life! And while I’m no spring chicken, I have at least tried to take care of myself. Geeze! I don’t think I’ve EVER been that depressed. I went home and had a drink or 5 and went to bed….