A Bucket of Ashes

“True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.” (Kurt Vonnegut)

I was watching the Drew Barrymore rom-com 'Never Been Kissed' with my daughter the other evening.  It's a delightful film; funny, warm and sincere. If you've never seen it (and you never know, you might like to), then briefly, through her job as a young newspaper reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, Ms. Barrymore's character gets the chance to go back to high school.

It's more complicated than that, obviously, but the point I'm making for the purposes of this particular blog is, she gets to go back. She gets a second chance to both relive the worst moments of her life AND do it right this time.

So it got me thinking about my own high school experiences, and my place in that strange and wonderful environment which serves so much to shape the adults we become.

I was a nerd in high school (and I proudly remain so, now in my middle age).  However, I will be the first to admit that I was a bit of an unusual entity, in so much that I somehow managed to cross the invisible dividing lines between peer groups.

The nerds liked me because I was myself a nerd, and we enjoyed a sense of kinship and empathy.  

The bookworms liked me because, thanks to my early childhood being raised by my maternal grandparents, who both had a great love of the written word, I was well-read for my relatively young age.  But that's a whole other blog for another time.

The high school 'creatives' liked me because I could sing and dance (thank you, Mum), and I was often dragged drafted in to "fill in" at school shows and reviews.  Perversely, it was these very experiences which left me with crippling stage-fright in my adulthood.  But maybe that's yet another blog for some other time.

The high school jocks liked me (we didn't call them "jocks" in England, but for the purposes of this blog, that's what they were) because, thanks to my Daddy being a boxer and then later a footballer, and my Uncle Johnny taking me to motor-racing meetings, I probably knew more about most sports than they did.  And possibly still do.

I'm not sure the 'popular' girls so much liked me as tolerated me, although I was always afforded the oh-so highly sought-after courtesy of being in their inner circle.  Looking back now, I have no doubts at all that this was down to (a) their precious jocks liking me, and (b) my being funny.  Who knows?  Perhaps they saw me as some kind of jester to their court.  

However, anyone familiar with the works of Shakespeare will know that the Fool often wields far greater power within the royal courts than their lowly social standing would suggest.  Maybe that's why they were happy to have me around; perhaps knowing that I was so friendly with the boys they loved so much meant they thought I knew something they didn't.  Silly cows.

I was never a pretty girl in my childhood and have, as they say, "grown into my looks" in adulthood.  But I was smart and, as an aunt of mine pointed out to me on my 18th birthday, my brains were my saving grace.  What the old trout actually said was, "It's a shame for you that your sister got all the looks, dear, but being clever means you'll always be able to survive on your own."

Anyway, I digress.  

So after watching the film I started thinking.  If I could go back to high school, what, if anything, would I do differently?

Well, for starters, I'd change my look.  The 1970s were unkind enough as it is to a teenage girl with a mane of wild curls and a lisp, without the added insult of having to suffer a second time through the Decade that Sartorial Good Taste Forgot.  No doubt the cheesecloth shirts, tank tops, and stonewashed demin jeans with flares the width of Finland were a good idea at the time, but I now find myself asking the question, "What the purple frak were we thinking?!!"  If nothing else, we risked being lifted up by a freak gust of wind and getting blown along the M4 and crash-landing somewhere truly frightening, like Reading.  Or even worse - Slough.

Okay, I'm being flippant.  The things I'd want to 'do over' are far more important and involved than having an unfortunate wardrobe problem.  Top of my list would be to NOT lash out in anger at that girl who bullied me throughout my last year of junior school.  

She made my first year of high school a misery, too, until that one day on the sports field when she yet again made fun of me for my Mum having left home, and I finally snapped.  Punching the crap out of her felt so good at the time, but having my Daddy dragged up to the school because of it, and then seeing the look of shock, sadness and disappointment on his face, quickly made me realise that NOTHING was worth that.  Given the chance now, I would prefer to grit my teeth and walk away.

As it turns out, that girl remained a Grade A bitch for the rest of high school, but at least my fighting back meant she left me alone after that.  Unfortunately, she simply moved on to the next easy target.  I sometimes wonder if she changed as she got older and - one can only hope - wiser.  And yet the cynic in me doubts that.  With some people, you just know.

Befriending that quiet, unusual, slightly edgy lad who'd transferred in from another school half-way through 4th year would also be on the list.  Instead, I gave him a wide berth, but now I don't know why I did.  

I've sometimes thought of him in the years since, and to my eternal shame, I can't for the life of me even remember his name.  Whoever he was, I hope life since has treated him with greater kindness and understanding than high school (and I) ever did.

As a general rule I try not to regret things, preferring instead to live by my personal mantra of "Everything's a learning curve."   

Still, that doesn't stop me from having the occasional 'What if...?' moment.  Like most people, the 'what ifs' from my time at high school are reasonably tame when compared with those from adulthood, but are no less significant for all that.  Mind you, when it comes to adult 'what ifs', I've certainly had my fair share over the past few years. 

But that's a whole other blog for another time.