High School as Scene by a Cynical [ME]

My two year venture into high school sent me to the hospital. This is why...

    

High School as Seen by a Cynical

An English Essay

By Megean McBride

 

      In the morning, right before I open the car door of my mothers black Ultima and leave the partial enjoyment of the passenger seat, my mother pulls me roughly by the shirt sleeve and gives me a daily dose of her “tough love”…

 

      “Remember, you’re not going to the ‘real world’ and for the next six hours you wont be in training for the future. You’re going to prison so treat it like prison.”

 

      When I ask the usual expected questions, “how” and “why”, she simply smiles a straight teethed dimply smile, one of the many things I didn’t get from her, and replies…

 

      “Take the biggest guy, the leader of the pack, and beat him down in front of everyone.”

 

      Given the task I take my leave, stepping outside with my weapons of choice in either hand, a cup of Starbucks in the right and an I-Pod in the other. But once again, as she turns the keys and begins to start her own adventurous day of talking to business men in parks and taking the homeless guy down the street out to I-Hop, she rolls down the window and yells at me. This loud booming opera note hits the nerves and sends a vibrato that everyone hears, and I can’t help but duck down in my bright pink jacket. An instinctual survival method…

     

      “Remember, its prison and it doesn’t matter what you do in there as long as you still know who you are when you get out. Now go forth and do thy bidding!”

 

      Each morning as I gather up the confidence to walk down the hall of in my dirty old jeans, still worn from 7^th grade, and my bright pink Good Will jacket, the words that rang so loud and clear that it nearly caused a scene in front of the morning crowd, repeat in my head. Remember its prison… Those words may not seem that important to some people. In fact, to the naked sensible ear they may just seem like the crazed antics of a middle age Mexican woman that still hasn’t learned how to properly hang her towel on a rack, or even parallel park, but to me, they’re the words of someone who knows what it feels like to be confined. They’re the words of a fellow peer that’s gone through all the same “BS” I’m going through, and then some.

Most of the time those words are the only thing that get me through a day of my own cliché ridden, teen angst screaming, John Hughes written, hormonal hell. Let alone a full year and that’s not even the least of it. I could write a book alone on our school bathrooms and give examples too. How about the fact everyone happens to crowd over the same sink in one bathroom, when we all know there are about a million other bathrooms; or even the fact that when ever I go into a stall to do my business I find there’s no toilet paper, or, even worse, someone forgot to flush the toilet. They’re like prison bathrooms with less expensive toilet paper, because we all know the schools buy the cheap stuff. In truth, when ever I have a bad dream, in some odd way I always end up in the “E” hall’s girls bathroom looking at myself in the mirror and crying over the fact that I found a new zit or worry wart, or there’s a pop quiz I haven’t studied for, or there’s a hair out of place that simply wont cooperate with me. The stress of the bathroom alone is enough to make any kid go insane, but its not simply the bathrooms we’re all worried about. That’s just the cherry on top of the big fat high calorie sundae that us girls can’t eat, because we’ll gain weight. And no one wants to be the fat kid.

High school to me isn’t a prison. It’s a jungle of soon-to-be-has-beens, wanna-bes, and sure-things. Quite frankly we all know that high school is full of “Sure Things” that lay underneath our freakish teenage raider of “Unknown S#*$&”. It’s a sure thing that if we get failing grades we probably won’t go to college, thus wont have a normal life. It’s a sure thing that if we don’t fit in with a said group that we have no social skills and, thus are not a said likable person and will probably never be loved. It’s a sure thing that if we’re bad in any way we’ll be sent to the “other” high school. The reject one were Ritalin addicts are more common that good grades and poor lunch meat. It’s a sure thing that we’re all royally screwed if we don’t somehow finally learn how to crawl our pimply butts to the top, or fall just below the raider enough to not be called on. These sure things, though most not might admit it, are always lingering in the back of our teenage minds- next to sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll, of course, because we all know how we’re going to get our next fix of addiction is on our minds 24/7. The professionals seem to know exactly what’s on our minds, right next to our mothers and our teachers. Riiight?

Lets face it. The educational system isn’t the greatest place to learn great lessons that will somehow build a “brighter future”. Sure we learn about how to dissect frogs and write the same 6^th grade essays on how “surviving in the wilderness drove children mad” in Lord of the Flies, or what kinds of racial lessons one can concoct from To Kill a Mocking Bird, the longest most loveliest boring book ever, but we don’t learn the fundamentals. Stuff that will really be useful in life. Like how to tell your mother, in the most gentle way possible, that you’re pregnant, or how to apply for a job at Walmart or Sarbucks. I hear they’re making great careers out of selling an over populated crowd of scene kids a cup of vanilla flavored addiction. What we learn in a semi-unintentional way is how to survive in a closed environment of hormonal sweaty hands, disease ridden mouths, “sex” driven minds, and, worse, no toilet paper in the girl’s bathroom. The most we really learn in a week is how to find a substitutes new panic button. Now, that’s a skill that takes some good hard work and dedication to really perfect.

So, you want to know what’s on our minds. The truth is they’re mostly blank. Yes, blank and hollow as a 10^th grade art student’s canvas painting. You want to know how I know this, other than the fact that I am one of these said teenagers? Well, when setting out to prove myself wrong and everyone else that the educational system isn’t prison and we’re really working towards a higher goal, I did my background research. First I checked the Ebsco for any articles on the psychoanalysis of the teenage mind. You know what I found? Well, plenty of papers on how crappy the school lunches are. I’ll tell you that. Then I read through just about a hundred articles on how to survive in the high school environment, none of which were helpful in any way. I mean, really! Do they really think talking about our “feelings” is going to actually help us deal with a bunch of judgmental heartless brats anyway? Finally I went straight to the source. I interviewed every teenager within a ten mile radius of the school. I set out with camera and coffee in hands and asked the real questions, “How do you survive in high school?”, “What coping mechanisms do you use to get through the high school experience?”, and my favorite, “How do you stand this s#!&@ hole?”. Most kids looked at me as if I was insane, or had just made some obscure joke they couldn’t get, others gave me a half-assed answer that started with “Um…”. Out of the 109ish students I interviewed exactly three had good real answers with good real examples.

One said simply to me, “Well, its like this. Grade schoolers are mean, Middle Schoolers are cruel, but high schoolers are just brutal. You get by though.” Another one scrunched up his nose and gave a disgusted frown. “Look, if you don’t know how to survive in high school already you’ve got problems, lady.”

My favorite was a student I didn’t know existed until the moment I interviewed him, a boy whom wishes to remain anonymous. By the time I interviewed him I was so tired from all the “I don’t know’s” and “Ask me later’s” that I didn’t think I could bare another bone head answer, but when I asked him how he survived in high school he simply said…

 

 “I stay away from as many people as possible.”

 

When I asked him what he meant he looked me straight in the eyes and replied…

 

“I stick to my corner and everyone sticks to theirs. I don’t ask them how their days goin’ they don’t ask me. That’s the deal. I don’t throw my s#!&@ on them and f#^$ with their group and I get to survive for another week. That’s how it works in these parts, you shut up, and you survive.”

 

      This kid blew me right out of my sockets. You shut up and you survive… Really, could there be any greater poetry from a fellow prisoner? Winston Churchill once said, “Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.” And every time I read that quote or thought about what that kid said I found myself going back in the 9^th grade, the days when I was a lonely thriving home school child, and the decision I had to make to go back to regular school.

      In the days before I moved to a new fresher state and started my new adventure on the Oregon Trail in a tiny town called Fairview, I had a decision to make. This decision that would determine my future and change my life forever. I could either stay in home school, finish high school by age 16 and go to a pre-Madonna chef school were I would be a one-hit-wonder prodigy and possibly be hated by all my peers, or I could go back to regular high school and brave it out with the rest of them.  It took me nearly a week to make such a decision and in this week I asked everyone I knew that I had admired over the years their opinion on the subject. I asked college professors, college students, high school drop outs, English majors, art majors, theater majors, coffee shop owners, thriving business men, and just about a million elderlys’ what they thought about me going to high school. The high school drop outs all said that they loved high school that that it might be a fun experience for me, the elderlys’ laughed at such a question and told me a “back when I was a kid” story about dinosaurs or World War I or something, I didn’t pay attention, and the college students ultimately told me that it was my decision, but I shouldn’t grow up too fast and make such a decision so young. The most harrowing answer I got was from all the people I admired. The people that were the most experienced in life and love, the people that had gone through high school and had later come out as well-rounded individuals with city condos and “Little did he know” classes. When I asked most of these people my question about going to high school and explained to them my circumstances they all threw up their noses in disgust. All of them had hated high school. They described it as a prison that was meant to crush the innocent and bury the brave, an institutionalized hell of sweaty gym socks and packaged school lunches. They told me that if I did go to regular high school I would be seen as legally insane and referred me to many good therapists in the area.

      This shocked and appalled me because I had always imagined high school a fairytale place in which you found herself and your position in life with great people and interesting food. I remember one morning I was brooding over my decision and I sat at the kitchen table with my mom. She was writing in her new laptop and drinking stale coffee from a dirty cup.

     

“What’s wrong?” She asked me.

      “Well…” I began, but to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t sure were to begin and it took me forever to even put out the words that I had repeated so often in those days. “I don’t know if I want to go back to high school yet.”

      For a moment she raised an eyebrow and just stared at me as if looking for something. I frequently got these looks when I asked a stupid question and I couldn’t help but cringe at the fact I might be seen as ‘stupid’, even to my mother who had seen me in my drooly bed-wetting days.

      “Why do you want to go back?” She finally asked.

      “Well,” –A word I said a lot and a habit I still haven’t broken. “I’d like to find some real friends I can actually talk about stuff like music and politics and the world with.”

      A moment of silence and she laughed right in my face.

      “Honey, is that how you think high schoolers act?” I nodded indignantly. “Well, then you should just stay in home school and go to college because the most profound thing you’ll get from the high school experience is possibly a good A and a tampon.”

      “What will I do then? I don’t know if I want to go back.” I sunk lower in my chair. “I want real friends.” Back then I was lonely and sad.

      “Megean.” My mother looked me straight in the eyes. “High school is going to be one of the s#!@est experiences of your life and you’re going to hate it. High school isn’t like other places. Its prison. Do you think you’re really going to learn how to survive in the wilderness with text books and grades?”

      “Did you like high school?” I pressed the question.

      “Yes, but I didn’t get to finish. I got pregnant with your sister.”

      “Oh.”

      “Look, high school is one of the scariest experiences most people will ever face. Choosing to go back is your decision.”

 

      That’s the moment I decided to go to regular high school and brave it out with the crows and corpses, because if I was going to be a real writer, a real person, I would need some real experiences. Sure, I knew how to write an essay or a screen play. I was proficient in math and science and almost anything the history books threw at me; but what I wasn’t keen on was people skills and I lacked the life experience needed to back up the many things I wanted to do with my life.

      So I braved going back to regular school and studied all I could of my fellow peers. I learned how to conduct a proper speech, follow up on a greater history debate, and dissect a frog. From putting myself in real high school situations I learned how to cheat, steal, gossip, connive, and destroy other people’s reputation. I learned how to properly lie and I got pooped on plenty of times along the way. You want to know what I have from surviving a year of high school? Bad grades and a newly found heart condition from all the coffee I’ve been drinking just to get through a single day of this hell hole. I have a rekindled addiction to Tylenol and chocolate chip cookies. I have a newly found weight problem fixed with a side eating disorder. I have a hundred new pairs of shoes that I’ll never wear and a broken bank account from buying stuff for people that I thought would stay by my side forever. And, most of all, I have a new appreciation for the real world. Not high school, because we all know high school is nothing like the real world, but the real world were people are partially polite and where office workers don’t think twice to spread a rumor that you wore diapers till you were 9, or to turn your friends away from you just because of your newly found sexuality. I’ve learned to appreciate the fancy depressing stuff like Nietzche and Van Gogh. I’ve learned how to act stupid to get boys to like me. I’ve learned how to write crappy non-research papers. But the most important think I’ve learned is how to survive in prison.

      In a prison were people tell you when to eat, walk, talk, and even when to breath. In a prison full of jocks, preps, punks, and nerds. In a prison that smells of weak old school lunches, unwashed jock straps, and Starbucks coffee. In a prison full of just about a hundred kids I despise with every fiber of my being, and yet hardly even know. In a prison I happen to like.

      Every morning, right before I open the car door of my mothers black Ultima and leave the comfort of the passenger seat my mother pulls me by the shirt sleeve and gives me words of inspiration and joy.

 

      “Remember, you’re not going to the ‘real world’ and for the next sic hours you wont be in training for the future. You’re going to prison so treat it like prison.”

 

      And as I swallow these words down with a 430 calorie frapachino and a tylenol I repeat these words in my head. Remember its prison… That’s when I situate myself, close the car door, and ready myself for a brand new day of anxiety in which I might not survive. The smells and sounds of school breakfasts and dirty teenagers fill the air and fill me with an insane excitement only one place could really give me. I fix my eyes on the front door and the ugly green logo that reads “Reynolds High” on it, and the words beneath it.

 

“Goodmorning Reynolds High School!”

“Hello Hell.”

 

Reviews

[Lauren]

You dont know me. I'm in Mr. Jodies writing group and i was just searching through his page and i read something and saw a comment from you and I thought to myself that is Mr. Jodies daughter i do believe. anyways Ive read his stuff and so i wanted to discover if you were any good like him. And you are :) As a fellow highschool student myself i relate. although i dont have a mom wise enough to tell me highschool is a prison. even though she should know. Anyways. You should count yourself lucky that your bathrooms have doors on the stalls. *cringe* But what i really want to get down to, and what you will probably care more about then some lame a*s intro is that i really like your writing. It has a very raw feel to it which i like. i like that you are obviously not holding anything back and are not afraid to say exactly what you mean. its refreshing. sometimes i just get so sick of picket fences and blondes. god how i hate those blondes...anyways. I really enjoyed your writing. Bravo! And good luck with prison. At the very least it provides you with witty inspirations for future writing :)