School of Hard Knocks

My in-box, like the snail mail box at home, occasionally gets cluttered with stuff I have no intention of reading. Included in this virtual round file are all the e-vites I keep getting from Classmates dot com. If they only knew how much I hated high school, perhaps they'd quit soliciting me. Or I could simply unsubscribe to Classmates.com myself. But that would take effort. And at the moment, I’m conserving energy.

 

My high school days, spent at that cesspool otherwise known as San Juan High School, were on a completely different plane from the “Happy Days” of Fonzie and Richie Cunningham. Theirs were delightfully over in a half hour with nearly all issues resolved. Mine seemed to go on forever, left me feeling like a dork, that I didn’t belong or that my existence was pretty much useless. But if I somehow came through intact till 2:45 and another temporary reprieve, I'd have to get up and do it all over again at 8:15 the next morning.

 

At the home of the Mighty Spartan, my most notable accomplishments were being able to blend in with the other nameless rabble roaming the halls, stay out of trouble, under the radar and work just hard enough to get through the day. Oh, I learned I could kick a soccer ball and not hit a curve ball, but at the end of it all I was merely four years older, not necessarily wiser, and just one of a couple hundred other mostly average teenagers that graduated together one hot June evening when our sentence at San Juan High had been completed. Suffice to say, for me, high school sucked. It was the least favorite time of my life

 

I did manage to make a few friends along the way, though. Guys I hung out with after classes or soccer practice, loitering around at Foster’s Freeze on Greenback, or scoping out the girls at Sunrise Mall. Of course, it's true that most of the chicks we cruised were barely aware that my friends and I were even breathing. Yet watching and roving within the safety of a pack of like-losers made the perpetual brush-off a little more palatable. In fact, we just laughed it off; either at ourselves or at the girls. But let’s be honest. I knew it and so did everyone else: whether at school or at the Mall, when it came to the opposite sex I was nothing more than a window shopper. Able to look, but never able to buy.

 

And though I did successfully reach the end of my San Juan tenure with a shred of sanity and a valid diploma, the one thing I wanted more than anything out of high school, and seemed forever out of reach, was a girlfriend. Not a friend that happened to be girl, I wanted a real life girlfriend. Going through a dreadfully awkward time of life, lacking any sense of value, craving a sense of belonging and emotionally starved for affection, I wanted to find someone to love me. I longed for it.  And I never found it, at least not in high school. But not for lack of effort.

During my sophomore year, I developed an unspoken crush on a girl named Cheryl, a nice looking, popular girl who I shared several classes with We got along well enough, I think. At least she knew my name, talked to me and seemed un-repulsed by my mere presence. But silly me; I somehow interpreted all that to mean it was okay to speak up about how I felt and ask for a date.  And sillier me, one turn down wasn't enough. I let her turn me down twice.

The first time, Cheryl was polite and said she had “other plans”. A week or so later, I tried again (big mistake), and this time in the presence of some of her friends (bigger mistake). And this time, she was much more direct: “You’re joking, aren’t you?”

Yikes.

 

She broke from her friends and with a head nod, indicated I should follow. “Look, you’re a nice guy and I don’t want to hurt your feelings ...” (translation: she was going to anyway). Next, she gave me a brief lesson in chick-speak. "But when I say I'm 'busy' or have other plans, it's just a polite way of saying I don't want to go out with you.” 

Oh, so that's how it worked.

 

Then, she brought our little chat to a no-uncertain terms end with ground rules for any future discussion. “Quite honestly, I didn’t want to go out with you last week, I don’t want to go out with you now, and I won't want to next week or any other week, too. Okay?”

Okay!

 

Finally, she tossed in a cursory “Sorry” at me, before turning away and going back to her friends. As they walked off, I couldn’t help notice they were having a pretty good laugh, undoubtedly at my expense. I guess by schooling me on how the world worked, at least as it pertains to dating, Cheryl probably thought - in a perverse way- that she was doing me a favor. And maybe she had. But if I was now supposedly somewhat smarter, how come I felt so completely stupid?

 

Later that night Mom found me in my room, all bummed out, and asked what the trouble was. And if I'd only been mildly retarded, I'd have just answered I was having trouble with one of my classes. But, no, I told her point blank about the blunt rejection Cheryl had dealt me.  "Oh Honey, I'm sorry. That's too bad". Mom sounded sincere, though, and I honestly thought she understood how badly hurt I felt. If only she'd stopped there.

"But see? It's probably the way you look. What have I always told you? Girls don't like bums and slobs, 'ya know? That's kind of how you look sometimes and I'll bet it’s probably your hair that turned her off. Why don't you run out tomorrow and cut it and ask her again." Mom's ability to completely miss the point was often astounding. One, my hair wasn't that long; in fact it was much shorter than many of my peers and I felt no compulsion to cut it. And second, I was never going to ask Cheryl out again, under any circumstances. 

To be fair, I guess that was Mom's idea of being empathetic. But in my ears it just sounded cruel. I didn't need to be torn down any more than what Cheryl had already done. And whether it was the truth or not, what I needed right then was a little propping up, a little compassion. The 'ultimate make-over' talk could wait for another time. I wanted to curl up in a ball and die. And I wouldn't admit it because I was 16 and thought I was grown up, but right then I simply could've used a maternal hug.

But after Mom's mini-lecture, I meekly crawled back into my hole, believed the worst about myself and gave up the idea of ever winning the hand of a fair maiden at school. I stopped thinking, or even make-believing I was okay.  I had a sense of humor, was fun to be around and played sports. But none of that seemed to be working. And though my hair was usually combed, washed and seemed quite socially acceptable at school, I just couldn't make it or myself acceptable at home. And it often seemed like I never would. Sigh.

In Cheryl's defense, though, she didn't know me much beyond the superficial. But Mom had known me all my life. So I found her evaluation of me somewhat irritating, if not painful. Of course, as far as she was concerned, her "concern" was meant for my own good and spoken “in love. However, I'd lived with Mom's undercurrent of disapproval for a long time and it often irked me, mainly because I seldom felt the love and missed the “meant well” part altogether.

Still, it would have been so wonderful during those years if even just one sweet girl had taken an interest in me. One that I could grow close to and be friends with; one that cared for me and I for her. Then I could say to Mom (and maybe Cheryl too) “Hey look. Someone thinks I’m special. Me. Just the way I am. And you (Mom) had nothing to do with it.” That would have made me happy beyond description.

But I understood what Mom didn't or ever would. Cheryl didn't reject me because of my hair. She rejected me because I wasn't in her strata. I wasn't terribly “cool” yet, and none of my friends hung out with hers. I'd simply aimed too high. Despite Mom's insistence, it didn't matter if there was or wasn't enough "lipstick to cover this pig." In the superficial world of life between the ages of 12 and college, Cheryl wasn't going to go out with me under any circumstances, simply because I didn't stand out in the crowd. I was a bowl of vanilla. She was looking for a tall cone of pistachio tutti-fruity. Sigh.

 

I'm so glad I'm not in high school anymore.