Mamakat: Life in High School

Mamakat's prompt:   What were you like in high school? Pardon any spelling and grammatical errors--I can't find my glasses.  


High school.  That cesspool of hormones through which we all must pass on our way to adulthood.  I entered the doors that first day with all the timidity, trepidation, and thinly-veiled excitement of a nun arriving at a nudist colony. 

I had heard horror stories.  Fights! Mayhem! Rampant Sex in the Hallways!  Drugs! Ack!

Whether any of the horror stories were true, I was stuck at Montgomery Blair High School for the duration.  I enjoyed quite a lot in those three years; met some awesome people, got into fights with a few.  Looking back at myself, I would have to say that I was a big-time nerd.  Huge.  As in nose constantly in a book, obsession with pens, poorly dressed, bad hair...you name it.   My outfits were hand-me-downs and often too big.  A fashion plate, I was not. 

I always had to be right all the time.  When a cute boy told me that I was wrong about his cold sore, I spent the time to research the various strains of herpes and presented it to him in a lovely envelope with hearts all over it.  I never did understand why that bothered him.  Now I understand.  That was pretty darn obnoxious!  No wonder we never dated!  I wanted to fit in, and in order to fit in, you have to be able to do something.  I could write, so I joined the school paper.  I could sing, so I joined the choir.  I could read, so I hung out with the other nerds in the library in the mornings. 

I was extremely literal, and took everything said to be serious.   This meant that I was often the butt of jokes, most of which flew right over my head.  I was the perfect straight man because I usually had no idea what was going on.   As we all know, all boys think about sex with the single-minded determination of a jaguar hunting a small mammal.  Unfortunately for them, I was just plain clueless when it came to social cues.  Unless someone said something, I didn't even notice.  Poor boys!  Some of them even asked me out, and were hurt by my quizzical expression. 

Girl friendships were extremely difficult; I was too trusting and unaware that some people would be haters.  I never understood the whole political aspects of high school until later, so I had no clue why I even had haters.  There really wasn't much to hate about me, come to think of it.  I certainly wasn't Cindy Crawford.  Unless Cindy was ever roundish, or as my friend says, "Fluffy".   I never hung out with anybody's boyfriend, at least not on purpose.  Some of the kids I hung out with were druggies/stoners, others were nerds like me with some Band nerds and Choir nerds thrown in.  I was often mocked by the "Gifted" kids because I couldn't be in the AP English class due to a schedule conflict.  That was a serious dent in my "nerd" cred, but I survived high school.

That's really all that matters.