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kirei_dakara2010-01-27 01:37 am
annapeace.livejournal.com) wrote in kirei_dakara2010-01-27 01:37 am
Entry tags:
Recollections
I Remember my brief flirtation with delinquency in high school. Or at least, it was delinquency by my standards.
I went to Troy High School, one of those magnet schools famous for their AP/IB/Tech programs, and when I entered, I was expected to be a full IB student, with Honors. Calculus and physics quickly disabused me of that notion. I hated math, I still hate math, and Trigonometry/Intro to Calculus classes pretty much made up the most awful time of my life. Chemistry seemed okay, but it still involved a lot more math than I would have liked, so when it came time to pick a science my sophomore year, I decided not to do Honors Chemistry and went with the nice, non-accelerated pace chemistry class. To make up for it - because of my mother's outrage that I wasn't in an Honors class - I signed up for Oceanography, figuring two science classes equaled one Honors class.
And that was how I met Steve. He was a senior in my Oceanography class, taking it because the teacher was easy and he needed an elective to fill his schedule. I sat at the same lab station as him, and to be honest, I was scared of him at first.
It's an untold story of segregation at Troy High School. There are the IB-track kids, who all take the same Honors classes and come from the same social backgrounds and have the same goal of becoming lawyers or doctors or engineers. And then there are other kids, who have normal high school lives and don't worry quite as much about Honors and APs and etc. And rarely the twain shall ever cross paths. Which was why when I first met Steve, I wasn't sure how to handle it. Someone who doesn't study all day or stress over tests? Someone who wants to be a mechanic? What a curious thing!
That was the how sheltered I was my freshman year.
But back to the point, I was scared of Steve. He wore a leather biker jacket and loved Ozzy Osbourne and had a goatee - so he wasn't just non-IB. He was one of those kids. You know. The ones TV shows always say are from the "wrong side of the tracks." And I was so scared of him that every time we had a lab assignment, I'd try to just do the work on my own, so I wouldn't have to bother him. To his credit, he didn't let me. Steve wasn't the best student, but he didn't try to ride on my coattails, even though he could have. And for some reason, he thought I was a genius and seemed proud to have a lab partner who always knew what was going on.
He liked me enough to let me join his little group of friends, in any case. And being part of his little group of friends meant that I was sneaking off campus for lunch (only juniors and seniors could go off-campus), hanging out with random guys I barely knew unsupervised in their houses, and going for crazy car rides that should have gotten us arrested (five counts of reckless driving and numerous more for knocking over traffic cones around road construction sites). This is all fairly tame by most standards, but by mine? I was walking on the wild side. It was the most exhilarating three months of my life.
Then Steve graduated and we lost touch, and I never did get that ride on the Harley he bought. But I still think back on those times fondly, especially because it marked the point in my life when I realized I didn't have to be "special." Being normal - not setting the curve on every test and maintaining a ridiculously high GPA - wasn't really all that bad. So I stopped worrying so much, relaxed a little, and high school became a lot more fun.
I went to Troy High School, one of those magnet schools famous for their AP/IB/Tech programs, and when I entered, I was expected to be a full IB student, with Honors. Calculus and physics quickly disabused me of that notion. I hated math, I still hate math, and Trigonometry/Intro to Calculus classes pretty much made up the most awful time of my life. Chemistry seemed okay, but it still involved a lot more math than I would have liked, so when it came time to pick a science my sophomore year, I decided not to do Honors Chemistry and went with the nice, non-accelerated pace chemistry class. To make up for it - because of my mother's outrage that I wasn't in an Honors class - I signed up for Oceanography, figuring two science classes equaled one Honors class.
And that was how I met Steve. He was a senior in my Oceanography class, taking it because the teacher was easy and he needed an elective to fill his schedule. I sat at the same lab station as him, and to be honest, I was scared of him at first.
It's an untold story of segregation at Troy High School. There are the IB-track kids, who all take the same Honors classes and come from the same social backgrounds and have the same goal of becoming lawyers or doctors or engineers. And then there are other kids, who have normal high school lives and don't worry quite as much about Honors and APs and etc. And rarely the twain shall ever cross paths. Which was why when I first met Steve, I wasn't sure how to handle it. Someone who doesn't study all day or stress over tests? Someone who wants to be a mechanic? What a curious thing!
That was the how sheltered I was my freshman year.
But back to the point, I was scared of Steve. He wore a leather biker jacket and loved Ozzy Osbourne and had a goatee - so he wasn't just non-IB. He was one of those kids. You know. The ones TV shows always say are from the "wrong side of the tracks." And I was so scared of him that every time we had a lab assignment, I'd try to just do the work on my own, so I wouldn't have to bother him. To his credit, he didn't let me. Steve wasn't the best student, but he didn't try to ride on my coattails, even though he could have. And for some reason, he thought I was a genius and seemed proud to have a lab partner who always knew what was going on.
He liked me enough to let me join his little group of friends, in any case. And being part of his little group of friends meant that I was sneaking off campus for lunch (only juniors and seniors could go off-campus), hanging out with random guys I barely knew unsupervised in their houses, and going for crazy car rides that should have gotten us arrested (five counts of reckless driving and numerous more for knocking over traffic cones around road construction sites). This is all fairly tame by most standards, but by mine? I was walking on the wild side. It was the most exhilarating three months of my life.
Then Steve graduated and we lost touch, and I never did get that ride on the Harley he bought. But I still think back on those times fondly, especially because it marked the point in my life when I realized I didn't have to be "special." Being normal - not setting the curve on every test and maintaining a ridiculously high GPA - wasn't really all that bad. So I stopped worrying so much, relaxed a little, and high school became a lot more fun.