Sunday Archive XVII: Look Back

From December, 06.  I never put this up because I feared my old roomate.

Look Back

The thing that really confuses me, after all the other things that really confuse me, is high school nostalgia.  I can understand it when you’re a college freshman and shit really sucks, but when you’re in your 30’s?  It’s the cult of rose tinted glasses, I guess.

My last friend from high school (who I currently share an apartment with) had a visitor last night.  I pop in, the guy shakes my hand, and the introduction is:  “You remember Thomas, right?”  Social custom demands that I say yes, though the truth was that I had no fucking clue, so Thomas says, “I remember you from the bus.”

The bus?  The last bus I rode was between Carlisle to Brampton in the UK.  So I’m thinking, wow, pretty cool.  But then I get a clarification, because I think I had a look on my face that telegraphed the thought: Huh?  The clarification was that he was on the bus to high school, a senior when I was a freshman.

Okay, let’s review:

First of all, I’m supposed to remember someone that I knew for nine months of my life?

Second, I’m supposed to remember an outgoing senior that I wouldn’t have had any association with?

Third, fucking high school was 792 motherfucking years ago.

Why would anyone in their right mind be nostalgic for high school anyway?  Okay, if you went to Ridgemont High, or were a member of The Breakfast Club, I could understand being nostalgic.   But we were all schleps.  My friend, this guy Thomas… I was certainly a schlep.  Zits, untouched by women, uncomfortable in my skin, a prisoner of adults, no money, no car… There was nothing good about high school.

My theory is that, as my generation rolls into their 30’s, they start to get nervous.  Jesus died at 33, why are we any better?  Now, Mohammed made it to 63.  Of course, he died like a pussy.  You know, that should determine which religion is stronger.  Mohammed – dies of a little migraine after a lifetime of great deeds.  Jesus – dies like the fucking lunatic he was after three years of stirring up trouble and living closely with men.

No, I just ended up creating confusion there.

So, anyway, I wrote this article about turning 30 and how it’s a new lease on life and we should all just shut up and enjoy it.  But I don’t even read my articles, so there’s no use linking it.  The larger point is that high school was…well, forever ago.  Let go.  Nothing was achieved in high school, nothing good was done.

Maybe it’s because people can’t make friends anymore?  We’re so far removed by overworking, the internet, whatever.  In high school, we all had our stupid little clique, our closed group of fellow schleps who mocked and brutalized us as much as our enemies.  Maybe we look back at that sense of false belonging and we realize how lonely we are now.  Maybe I’m just sitting here being angsty about this because I met all my best friends after high school and am frustrated by people who still cling to their high school group 15 years later.