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I was a high school dork and am kind of proud of that High School Confidential

August 11, 2007 By pia

The epicenter of this Upper West Side apartment search was Zabar. Mine was Fairway. Not really, but I had a very specific geographical area in mind: as far west of Broadway as possible, though not in the river, and between but not including West 70something and another West 70something. We pay too much for too little space. It might as well be exactly where want it to be.

High school confidential is before my time. Check out the cast–a few famous daddy’s and famous TV daddy, now dead, a very young–well see

My time was tie dye and neon and I had 24 carat gold glasses that I never wore because I wouldn’t be seen without contact lenses–it was the era of groovy and other expressions I won’t use because I hated them then.

I come from a very unusual town. It’s not really a town. More a collection of developments, a strip mall that has been jazzed up, a firehouse, and some schools. Actually I grew up in a school district.

It wasn’t the richest community on Long Island by far. It was probably the only one without any poor people. Diversity came in shades of white.

There were people who peaked in high school, and people who have hated it as a lifetime activity. I don’t fit in either category. I did spend years telling stories about how I didn’t fit in my community. The thing is most people didn’t feel they fit. Even the people who who seemed to meld seamlessly.

High school was over many years ago. Why did I see people tonight I knew but wasn’t really friendly with? For many reasons. some that I can’t quite articulate.

Our lives went in different directions. Yet they all led back to an exit off the Expressway.

There’s something comforting in connecting with people who knew me when I felt awkward, weird and out of sync with the world, yet they wanted to see me anyway. We all had our high school horror stories yet it was the stories of small kindnesses we wanted to share.

I didn’t know that cheerleaders felt out of place. Yet when I think about it, I have known many high school cheerleaders, after the fact, who felt that they hadn’t quite belonged. I never thought about that before.

I’m not going to tell people they should edit the bad memories out. For they do serve a purpose. If only to bond in college and later with other people who felt like a dork. Though today that’s a good thing.

It was strange that I came to terms with my past just when I’m writing about high school angst.

As a society we point to some years, and say “and this is when the world changed. Martin Luther King Jr and Robert Kennedy were killed when I was graduating high school. Cities burnt. None of this directly affected us. We were sheltered.

But what did our parents know? My mother couldn’t tell marijuana from oregano. I should have said I had that last thing once. I won’t tell that story here. Nor will I talk more specifically about tonight right now. Maybe I’m not ready to. Maybe I do have an aversion to telling stories about my present day life.

It was a fun night. I feel validated or vindicated or whatever you feel when you come to a new understanding about yourself.

And we could speak in a kind of a short hand only known to people who were in all your classes or around you from Seventh through Twelfth Grades. I always felt cheated that I didn’t go to a larger school where I could meet new people in High School and maybe that would have been better.

But you’re dealt the hand your parents give you during those years, and I guess it’s up to you to make it work. Maybe it did work better than I believed.

I have long expected people to like me and to want to get to know me. Maybe I did expect that, just a bit, because I grew up in a place where everybody knew my name.

Usually I believe that if you can make it out of this community with your head attached to your body you can make it anywhere.

I am learning that at this stage of life, I have to reach for fun. It’s not going to come calling. Maybe most people learn that much earlier.

I like making things happen. I always have but never really understood that even when I wasn’t consciously reaching out, I was. People really don’t reach out to somebody who isn’t receptive. People really don’t want to hang with somebody who doesn’t give of themselves. That isn’t to say I gave anything of myself in high school. I loved high school angst. But I did know that I was known.

I think of the 90’s as my dark decade. I was constantly striving to make my life better. I felt bitter because so many things that weren’t great happened. My parents died. My youth ended. Is that such a horrible thing? I thought it was but several years ago realized that I could make the next chapter as much fun, but differently, as my late teens, 20’s, and 30’s. Tonight helped seal the deal.

I do find it a bit sad that I always expected “great things” to happen. I defined “great” a bit more loosely than most people. I wouldn’t go to law school as my father wanted me to because I honestly loved working, much of the time, didn’t want to be a lawyer though I knew I could use the degree for other things, and didn’t want anything to interfere with my social life.

I loved staying out until very late and going to work on three to five hours sleep. It was a kind of high onto itself.

I wrote this when I was one drink over the line. One drink too many for me is one more than two with food. Lots of food.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqRCKRO41P4]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: personal essays

« Son of Sam was an adoptee who was also a serial killer
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Comments

  1. Doug says

    August 11, 2007 at 9:48 am

    That was a great clip to go with that story. You’re still a young Savage from a nice family.

  2. Tricia says

    August 11, 2007 at 7:21 pm

    I had a very close knit group of friends in high school. I still consider myself really lucky for that. With both of my parents in the music industry we never lived in one place long enough for me to ever get comfortable or to form any lasting friendships, until I started High School.

    We moved to Maryland the summer before I started High School and it just clicked. The girls I had met over the summer were, and remain, dear to me. I was really lucky that my mother was willing to turn down two promotions (a death sentence in the music biz btw, thank God she was so good at what she did. Turn down a promotion and you may as well kiss your career goodbye). It allowed my to graduate with people I actually knew. That means a lot now looking back on my gypsy youth.

    I haven’t been to a reunion yet though. Just distance.

    I hope you had a wonderful evening!

  3. Bone says

    August 12, 2007 at 2:02 am

    So much I want to comment on here, but I have to get in bed early so I’ll be fresh and alert for Scott Baio Is 45 & Single Sunday.

    But I’m glad you got some validication.

    Love the phrase “you’re dealt the hand your parents give you during those years.”

  4. Jennifer says

    August 12, 2007 at 2:52 am

    Hello, I have been reading your blog now for 2 years and I think you are very engaging writer. I think of myself as writer and I hope to be as good as you are. I added you to my list so I can read your on a more regular basis.
    Take Care, Jennifer

  5. stickpaste says

    August 12, 2007 at 7:33 am

    As your lawyer I advise you to pump the dosage.

    I understand your isolation. I grew up in Alaska. Remote and cluster-fucked, and I do wonder if things would be different if I had grew up in a proper, exciting place.

    I also think its weird how high school is this sort of prism, in which the rest of one’s life is to be divined from. Fuck, I hope nothing I did in high school makes the permanent record.

    Anyways, love the page.
    stickpaste
    http://stickpaste.blogspot.com

  6. Donald Douglas says

    August 12, 2007 at 7:46 pm

    Nice post, Pia! I was kind of a late bloomer in high school as well. I’m a bit younger than you – Van Halen was hot when I was a junior, and I used to have a crush on this girl named Rae Marie Bonacci, and I used to think about her when “You Really Got Me” came on. When I went to the twentieth reunion a few years back, Rae Marie and some of the other hotties from back then start fawning over me (my wife thought it was kind of funny!).

    So you never know how people will turn out or remember you!

    It’s good to get our own dark decades out of the way, as well.

    Have a great night! Hope you’re keepin’ cool. I was in NY last week, and boy was it hot!

  7. cooper says

    August 13, 2007 at 12:43 am

    I often feel left out when I read this as if I missed “the old days of the old days”. I think of high school as “back there”. Part of the movie which is my life, a movie I am making. This is something everyone is doing these days – making their own movies. 😉

    This was a great piece. I liked the clip and I’m kind of pissed I missed out on those snugly fitting skirts and quaint little blouses. Not to sad about those pointy bras though.

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About Me

I live in the South, not South Florida, a few blocks from the ocean, and two blocks from the main street. It's called Main Street. Amazes me too.

I'm from New York. I mostly lived in the Mid-Upper East Side, and the heart of the Upper West Side. It amazes me when people talk about how scared they were of Times Square in the 1970's and 1980's.

As my mother said: "know the streets, look out and you'll be fine."

What was scary was the invasion of the crack dens into "good buildings in good 'hoods." And the greedy landlords who did everything they could to get good tenants out of buildings.

I'm a Long Island girl, and proud of it now.
Then I hated everything about the suburbs. Yet somehow I lived in a few great Long Island Sound towns after high school.

Go to archives "August 2004" if you want to begin with the first posts.

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