high school – HappyStinkingJoy

Stuck in the Past…

The wife and I have gone to a couple of high school basketball games recently. Our kids aren’t exactly overly athletic, but our youngest plays a mean trap set in the pep band. “Screw sports, we’re here for the band”… yes, we are those parents. Anywho, being in a high school gymnasium filled with high school kids and obnoxious parents (we sit on the visiting team side, because the view of the band is better, and not many of those parents listen to the whole pre-recorded message about not yelling at the officials and using good sportsmanship and whatnot… because they are assholes living vicariously through their children… did I mention my kid is an awesome drummer… there’s not a lot of yelling at officials and calling other children horrible things when you’re living vicariously through a band kid) made me realize that I hated high school.

I don’t remember always hating high school. In fact, I remember, at certain points as an adult, wishing that I could go back to high school and deal with the lesser stresses of that time. There was a time in my life where I thought that my years in high school were the best years of my life (college SUCKED) and that life was all downhill from there. But being in a gym filled with high school kids and watching how they interact and stuff, I have tried searching my memory banks for positive experiences that happened before I entered the real world. I am drawing an absolute blank. I know I had to have laughed and enjoyed myself in high school… but I can’t think of any specific times that I really had fun. Fully positive experiences, not touched by shades of gray, had to exist, but I can’t remember them. I can’t remember a single time of joy.

I remember people, and I remember liking those people. I can remember doing thing with those people, and I’m pretty sure that fun was had, but I can’t remember the specifics of the fun. There always seems to be darkness associated with every event I can remember; maybe that’s just high school?

I think I remember almost every negative experience that I lived through in high school. School dances ended nightmarishly. Losing my starting middle-linebacker spot on the football team my senior year because I was too small is something that shaped my future drastically. Being teased a lot my freshman year because I had transferred from a small, rural school to the “big city” (population about 3000) for high school and being thought of as a geeky, outsider loser set some precedents that have followed me through life. I started trying to be extremely nice to everyone because I wanted everyone to like me, and I didn’t think liking me was possible if I wasn’t super nice. I focused on being “funny”, and that somewhat seemed to work, but humor turns as bitter as it’s owner and I have probably hurt some feelings with my, at times, deeply sarcastic humor. I remember being depressed, a lot, and kind of hating myself. These few things I’ve mentioned are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I remember not having any confidence in anything about myself. So, why can I remember vividly the negative, but I can’t find any tiny nuggets of the positive that must have been. It’s driving me nuts how my memory seems so selective. I want to remember the good stuff; maybe that would help overshadow the bad.

I have never gone to any of my high school class reunions, and there have been three (one every ten years since we graduated). I always kind of think about it, but the negative thoughts just overwhelm any desire I have to be back around people and things from that time in my life (even though I know some of those people are really good people). A former female classmate, before the most recent reunion, told me I needed to go because some my female classmates were interested in meeting my wife. Apparently, there was a group of females in my class who thought I was gay, and they couldn’t believe that I had actually married a woman. Because I didn’t date or have girlfriends or seem to express any interest in the opposite sex, I apparently came off as gay. So, it appears that having absolutely no self-confidence in one’s desirability, or in having anything to offer to those he is attracted to, puts off a very gay vibe. Nothing against those who are gay, but that is definitely not the vibe I was gunning for in high school. Maybe I would have had a more positive experience in high school if I were gay, but I kind of doubt that being a gay teenager in the late 80’s in small-town Montana would have been a joyride. Plus, dudes are just disgusting and gross… I could never be attracted to that.

So, now I have all of my negative memories plus I have the confidence-draining knowledge that a segment of my female peers thought I was gay. Not surprisingly, as a straight dude who was terrified of the opposite sex through my youth and young-adult life, this knowledge doesn’t make me feel any better about my past.

Every now and then, I have a glimmer of a positive memory, but then, it’s like, “Oh, I remember how that ended… that wasn’t good.” My high school memories are just clusters of stuff not ending well. I feel like being able to recover some of the positive memories might help to push the negative memories (that constantly interrupt my thoughts) out of my way. Maybe I need to find my old high school yearbooks and look through the writings in those… but I’m going to guess that they will be filled with old buddies jokingly calling me names and making fun of me before letting me know that we were going to have the “BEST SENIOR YEAR EVER!”. Or maybe there will be some handwritten gems from female classmates alluding to a homosexual future that I didn’t understand or even know that others were expecting from me?

Yeah, maybe I should just let sleeping yearbooks lie. Besides, college was way worse…

Graduations! Ahhh, what a waste of optimism…

WARNING!!!

Recent high school or college graduates, please don’t read this post. I don’t want to be held responsible for harshing your mellow at this time of great accomplishment in your lives. As you travel the road of life ahead, you will have plenty of time to discover the truths held in my words for yourself.

The wife and I took our boys to our niece’s high school graduation this past weekend in North Platte, NE. So, we spent a weekend watching young people being recognized for their accomplishments. This all got me to thinking… thinking how much people could accomplish with their lives if the stinking real-world didn’t have to come along and jack everything up.

I remember graduating from high school feeling like the whole world was out there waiting for me to conquer it. I remember having the same delusions at my graduation from college. At my niece’s graduation, I could read the same thoughts in the faces of all of those graduates. They were imagining their futures filled with limitless opportunities. Give them a few years. They will find the limits. Actually, the limits will hunt them down and stomp many of them into the ground. I know. The graduating class speaker was a well spoken young woman who reminded the graduates that they were solely responsible for their own futures. Graduates and school administrators say that kind of stuff at graduations. Graduates and school administrators believe that kind of stuff at graduations. Now, with graduates being young and naive, such dreams are expected. School administrators, on the other hand, should know better but are extremely biased in their perception of the true value of “education.” Aside from the field of education, I can’t think of a single line of work in the United States of America where further education guarantees higher earnings, seniority, and advancement. A large percentage of people employed in the field of education seem to have lost touch with what it is actually like outside of the field of education, and those people probably should not be allowed to speak at commencement ceremonies; they paint an unrealistically-rosy picture.
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Well, I guess we want to give these young people hope for the future, right? No need having them give up when a very small percentage of them are going to accomplish those dreams. As for those who will not accomplish their dreams, they will have plenty of time to figure out what their futures hold.

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Soon enough, most of these optimistic young people will be just like the rest of us… wondering why everyone misled us about how bright our futures were. For the kiddos, when someone tells you that you may need to set “new goals” or dream “new dreams”, this is them gently telling your dreams and goals are unrealistic (see, they lied to you at graduation… you can’t accomplish anything you want). Pick something less-hard to accomplish, or maybe just settle for what you have. Less hard and settling are what most of us do on a daily basis…

High School Graduation

I spent a weekend about a month ago going to a couple of high school graduation receptions. Man, I can remember back to my high school graduation. Remember those days… when you still partially believed that life was fair and you could accomplish any goal? You were going places and had a lot of success in front of you? Then, life smacked you upside the head and — POW— life not only is not even close to being fair… it spends a large portion of time stinking.

Once we realize that success seems to only be for someone else, and then we start justifying crap to ourselves to make it seem like we found some measure of success… you know… “I have a great family, therefore I am successful”… “I get to go to work every day, and there isn’t much more to success than that”… “I don’t live in a trailer house, so I must be successful”… “I can put food on the table for my family and my kids love me; success, success, success!” I’m not saying that these things are bad; I’m just saying that these things are not a measure of success. These things are a measure of not being complete and utter trailer trash… which is the antithesis of success.

Success is a measure of worth. Worth is a value that you place on yourself and that others place on you. For example, people living in trailers (or low-income housing, or where ever) who feed their family exclusively with food stamps and don’t have job because, well, they can make more living off of the tax money paid in by people who actually work for a living, and a job may interfere with their addictions to medicaid-funded painkillers and Budweiser… I see these people as having very little worth. These people, however, may see themselves as having a lot of worth. Therefore, they are delusional. No… they have a feeling of self-worth but no actual worth, because they do nothing of value to society. When your feeling of self-worth and society’s value of your worth are both in the positive… Ta-Da… SUCCESS! It really isn’t hard to find something to do that society values. Society values a good Big Mac… and somebody has to flip it. Society values having trash collected and removed from houses once a week… and someone has to remove it. The problem is, as individuals, can we find a measure of self-worth in doing these “lowly” jobs? Maybe if these “lowly” paid paid more…

Our society is so majorly screwed up. I know this is going off on a tangent, but why aren’t the jobs that create the most value to society the ones that generate the largest income? Alex Rodriguez is a great baseball player. In other words, he is really good at playing a game. He makes millions of dollars a year. If A-Rod died tomorrow (and I am not wishing this on him by any stretch of the imagination), how would our society really be any worse off then it is today? In fact, if baseball completely disappeared off the face of the earth, other than lost marketing revenue and maybe a few people who make a living manufacturing baseball bats and stuff losing their jobs, society really wouldn’t be too severely hurt.

Now, let’s consider a garbage collector. These noble steeds who drive the big trucks around and take away all the stinky stuff you no longer want probably make around $30,000 to $40,ooo per year. Imagine if these people suddenly disappeared off the face of the earth. How much more would society suck without these guys collecting your crap. There would be a dramatic increase in the suck-o-tude of society without garbage collectors… yet they make only a small fraction of what a baseball player makes.

“Supply and demand” you may scream. “Anyone can be trained to collect garbage, but not everyone can hit like A-Rod!”

Right… not everyone can be trained to play a little kids game and be really good at it. If baseball never were, A-Rod would most likely be a lumberjack (one of the few “real world” places where the ability to “swing” has a payout). Anyway, it is hard to find the self-worth in your job when society deems you be paid only a small, small fraction of what someone who plays games for a living (or, in the case of an actor, pretends to be someone else and looks pretty while doing it) makes.

Okay, tangent over, back to high school graduation. High school graduates are people to be emulated. They are cocky and full of life. They are ready to succeed. They are, for the most part, full of delusions and will be bitterly disappointed with what life actually offers them, but they see the glass as half-full as opposed to half-empty. Me, I see the glass as not full. I don’t give a rat’s patootie if the stinking glass is half-empty or half-full… the glass is less than full and that sucks. I want a full glass, but a full glass is reserved for those who either were blessed with the ability to play games with an extreme amount of athleticism, people who are unnaturally pretty, people who are so full of self-confidence that they make the rest of us sick to our stomachs, and politicians. Working hard doesn’t cut it. Working smart doesn’t cut it. You have to work both hard and smart (and being pretty or tall doesn’t hurt) to succeed… and doing both at the same time gives me a headache. I don’t like headaches, therefore, I am not successful.

To all of the recent high school graduates out there who are reading this blog (seriously, there might be one!), keep your head high and keep dreaming of success. If you give up now, you are utterly screwed. If you remain positive… well… there is a chance you won’t be disappointed.

For the rest of us who are not recent high school graduates: if you haven’t found success yet, you probably never will. If success isn’t important to you, I’m sure you have a special spot in heaven with your name on it. If success is relatively important to you and you haven’t found it in your many years following high school… welcome to the happy stinking joy that is your life 🙂 It could be worse; you could be living in a trailer. If you are living in a trailer and have no future hope of getting out of that trailer as you improve your circumstances, QUIT USURPING MY TAX MONEY!!!

Man, I miss high school…