Today I went to a pizza shop before doing the grocery shopping. You can't shop very easily with a hungry kiddo. Anyhow, as I sat down I heard a few songs by "Rush". That was a band my friend Gil really liked quite a bit. It really took me back.

It was a sweet time yet a horrible time. I was in high school and the only currency that got you anywhere was being a basketball player. It's funny how almost every single girl in my class adored Chris who played outstanding basketball. Two girl liked another guy who happened to be a basketball player. Gilbert and I were long haired losers who didn't have the right stuff. I played guitar and classical piano, he was into singing and guitar. We did Schubert's Winterreise together.

We smoked weed together. (My errent youth) I never had to buy my drugs even once in my life. I grew it for myself and kept it to me and friends. Occasionally others would share but I wasn't keen on "socializing" with just anybody. Despite the long hair and "weed" we never really used foul language, even around each other. Girls had no interest in us and that stung hard. I was a "fairy" because I played piano despite the fact that I was hardly a girly man. I was always naturally strong but not talented at basketball. Girls did not dig me, I got hurt alot and let it show. One girl was so offended that I asked her for a date that she had to tell the whole ****ed school I had AIDS (which wasn't true of course). She somehow seemed happy to drag me down and show me my place.

My friend Gil didn't do much better. One night he freaked out and said he wanted to kill himself. He sadi he was going to drive his car 90 mph into a tree and actually tried to get into his car and drive off. He was drunk and crying (lovelorn) and his parents were nowhere to found. He was a danger to himself so So I duct taped him to his bed and went behind his house with Phil to smoke some weed and calm down (Gil made things tense). His parents came home, freaked out and called the police but he didn't rat us out. We quietly slipped into the woods behind the house. He thought the whole thing was hillarious afterward. He told his parents he tied himself up. Given how he acted from time to time, this was very believable.

School was horrible. Of course I went to a wonderful private school but it was horrible just the same. I quickly tired of absolutely everything that was taught there. I hated how you read one stupid book 5 - 10 pages at a time and sat around having class discussions and quizzes on it. I often read the books, even when I didn't care for them in one or two nights. They seemed to dwell on it forever. The math was interesting but very soon the teachers exhausted all they knew. Advanced material was noexistant. They simply rehashed the same old material and it was so ****ed boring. I was actually interested in math but the teachers couldn't offer me anything new. I went to school maybe 50% of the time during my senior year. I skipped and went to the library to read for hours on end, play some stick (there was no hockey team in my school) or played tennis with the old farts who were to me at least total masters of their game.

Meanwhile, the basketball jocks were laying all the girls I liked (one became pregnant, kind of weird seeing a girl you really liked pregnant) and treating them like trash. I picked a couple of fights with them and got into some pretty big trouble. The girls seemed shocked that I would win every time and hated me more for it. I felt cursed. My relations with my classmates soured so badly that I didn't go to my graduation and that really ripped my parents but I told them in advance that I just didn't want to go.

One girl I really liked alot called me later that summer and we spent time together. When I told her how I felt about her and would like to see her more she gave me the let's just be friends routine. She later was knocked up and her boyfriend was a drug addicted coke head (I only smoked Mary Jane never hard stuff) who had no interest in being a father even a decade later. Her father was a lawyer and they were well to do. Odd isn't it. Did I mention nobody I knew was poor. My dad owned a trucking business, my friend Gil's dad owned a supermarket. It's supposed to be poor kids getting screwed up right? What hell... Gil later carved himself and ended up in a psychiatric hospital. He emerged about a decade later a happy human being who recoved from his personal hell of high school (and college) married to a girl I once like alot (but never told her) of course. I went to the wedding but for some reason he ended things with me and I never saw him again after his wedding day.

Phil got his girlfriend pregnant and she hated him as much as he loved her. As far as I know she pathologically kept him away from his baby even though he was as nice a guy as your likely to meet. He worked at a toy store and after a few years had a mental breakdown. He smashed up nearly 100% of the merchandise in the store and was yelling and screaming.

My story ends well but it's sad for the next 4 years. I can't say I liked college more than high school. It was really more of the same. Girls I really liked wanting to have nothing to do with me, girls I didn't care for clinging to me and refusing to go away. At least I would walk away and be a good sport about rejection. Sometimes being a good sport wasn't enough. One girl I asked out happened to have a boyfriend. She turned me down and I accepted her decision and didn't push her. For the next two weeks her boyfriend prank called my house. Then one day campus police knocked on my door and very forcefully told me to leave this girl alone. I hadn't seen her but one time since she told me she wasn't interested. I merely smiled at her and said hello when she happened to walk by me. The campus police were very forcefull with me and shouted loudly and humiliatingly. I had done nothing wrong but since I'm sure they had to deal with their fair share of scum, they had certain attitudes and prejudices. Improper for a cop I know but hey.

I remembered the name of one of the campus police officers who mistreated me. While working at my fathers rental office I noticed his name in the files. It really was him and he was currently renting from my dad! I entered his apartment to check for "repairs" (as per our rental agreement) and discovered that he absolutely destroyed my dad's apartment. The bathroom was turned into a "sauna" and the walls were warped and wet. He was evicted and we sued him and won $5000.00 in damages. I'm sorry to say this but nearly every police officer I ever met in our town was a sorry excuse frat boy jerk with no integrity whatsoever. You know the guys who mistreat girls at their parties, binge drink, throw TV sets out the window, raise hell. I think he was a Beta.

I managed to fall in love again, expecting pain of course but was shocked to have the first girl who seemed to reciporcate. We dated for about two months when all of a sudden the guy who she wanted to marry (I wasn't told about this) suddenly came back. ) She turned on me and I didn't give up on her soon enough. I called her on the phone at least four or five times. Her father was a police officer and told me over the phone that he was a cop and he'd do this, this and that if I ever called again. (Sob! :( ) He started snooping on me even after I backed off from his daughter.

He tried to arrest me one night about one month later for drinking on public property. I was with my friend Frank and he told the officer that we were in fact on private property. His dad owned the parking lot. He was going to arrest us anyway when the mayor and Frank's dad happened to be walking back from getting a few drinks. Good thing!

I had a rotten time and a good time. I should have been doing other things in my life at the time like pursuing my dreams instead of trying to win some girls heart who wouldn't have me. College was as petty and rediculous as high school. I hated it.

Anyhow, these "supressed" memories from my school daze surfaced when I heard the song "Subdivisions" by "Rush" on the radio while sitting in the pizza store.
I have a beautiful wife and child now. The old world is still with me, everyday I see masses of young teenagers doing basically the same horrible things I can only remember all too well. What a waste. I hate that I couldn't have just met my wife early on and just got on with life (homeschooled myself, go to a real college instead of the state college in your hometown) but that's just how it is. Youth really is wasted on the young. Mine was wasted on pointless school and college, mindless but well meaning mentors, socially competative peers, self pitying friends not worth my time, and regrettably moderate substance abuse. To this day I get mail from my highschool asking me a donate money and go to their reunions (ha! ha!). Maybe I'll go someday. Yeah... I'll do it!



Subdivisions by Rush (lyrics)


Sprawling on the fringes of the city

In geometric order,

An insulated border,

In between the bright lights

And the far unlit unknown

Growing up it all seems so one-sided

Opinions all provided,

The future predecided,

Detached and subdivided

In the mass production zone.

Nowhere is the dreamer or the misfit so alone.


Subdivisions -

In the high school halls

In the shopping malls

Conform or be cast out

Subdivision -

In the basement bars

In the backs of cars

Be cool or be cast out

Any escape might help to smooth

The unattractive truth

But the suburbs have no charms to soothe

The restless dreams of youth

Cruising for the action,

Lit up like a firefly

Just to feel the living night

Well some will sell their dreams for small desires

Or lose the race to rats,

Get caught in ticking traps,

And start to dream of somewhere,

To relax their restless flight

Somewhere out of a memory of lighted street on quiet nights

Any escape might help to smooth

The unattractive truth

But the suburbs have no charms to soothe

The restless dreams of youth....

"Self-pity is our worst enemy, and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in the world."

You should feel honored that I read this tiresome monologue. Now at least you may get pity attention from the other posters.

Well, it was tiresome and useless in a way. Maybe it was more for me than anyone else. Right on, self pity is horrible. I indulged in it for too long. It's a thing of the past. I'm married and doing quite well. I became a millionaire through inheritence at the tender age of 26 and went through a strange experience with everyone in town acting very differently toward me. (I have since moved away and rarely visit) It wasn't all downside. It's nice to know I can quit work anytime I want. If anything girls perhaps had trouble with me because through no fault of my own I have a very high pitched, soft voice. (my birth defect) There's nothing I can do about it. I wanted to stress mainly the reality my youth, it was hampered by wrong attitudes, beliefs etc.

The sexy 2.8 M$ part is absolutely true. That was back in '97. I'm even richer now. I won't say by how much because I don't really know think 12% annually. You probably like me even less now that you know a glimpse of the other part of the story. You certainly can't pity me. Money never made me happy though, but I can assure you it's kind of cool being rich.

Self-pity is our worst enemy? I thought licentious sex was our worst enemy. Oh no, wait a minute. Hatred is our worst enemy. No, that can't be right. Let's see, I think being contemptuous of other people is our worst enemy.

Well, I'll think of the real worst when I think of the absolute bestest.

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Replying to:

"Self-pity is our worst enemy, and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in the world."

You should feel honored that I read this tiresome monologue. Now at least you may get pity attention from the other posters.

Spartacus,
I did not find your story boring at all. It was so much like what school was like eons ago when I graduated ('73). What was surprising was the affluence of your classmates but the problems being the same as at my "poor side of the tracks" school. Pecking orders, herd behavior, petty meannesses, focusing and obssessing on the unimportant. I LOL at the duct tape part. Kids and their limited perspective. Imagine how different your life might have been if your successful dad had just ditched the "school" and taken you to work with him every day. I'm glad for your financial well-being, it makes life a little easier, anyway, and it sounds like you deserve it.

Isn't it amazing , how one song can bring back so many
memories.

I grew up across the puddle from Detroit (MoTown). My favorite music was Bobby Dylan, Denver and Gordon Lightfoot. My teenhood was during the Vietnam war..... Geee, now you know how old I am ;-)

Lyrics from Rushs' Subdivisions are great, thankyou.

Bobby aka Oma