I graduated from Chambly County High School in 1997. 10 years on, I'm more educated, more confident, less misogynistic and less homophobic... not much taller, though. Or much richer, for that matter. But I'm paying the bills and still eating out, so who could complain? Anyway, it was about time for a 10-year class of 1997 reunion, so we had one just three weeks ago, on June 2nd. It was held at Kapetan's in Saint Lambert, a restaurant many of my classmates have fond memories of because apparently they were pretty lax about the drinking age regulations there back in the day.
High school was a fun, fun, time. Like everyone, I had so much more angst, self-consciousness and emotional drama then than now, I would have liked to be a few steps higher on the coolness pyramid, and I know some people had legitimately terrible times, but still I think your average 20-something is willfully misremembering if they claim it wasn't fun for them.
On the topic of high school drama, here's today's song. (If you're reading this on Facebook, you have to actually go to the blog to hear it.) It's by Billy Bragg, and if it doesn't remind you at least a little of high school, then... well, that's fine. But it says a lot about high school to me.
The Saturday Boy (powered by ODEO)
Sunday, June 24, 2007
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6 comments:
oh boy, i can so relate to this post... dont remind me of those high school years....
btw, i could not play the song the saturday boy...
off topic: i am going to vancouver in the next 2 weeks.... do you have any recommendations? it is your country, i thought i'd ask... :)
se cuida, beijos.
i've got one more year to go before my 10 yr. we had a 5 year reunion already though... it was definitely fabulous to see all my friends, but also really interesting to learn that i still have no interest talking to an entire sector of my class. i figured time would heal wounds, blah blah blah, we'd all be the same cool level now that we were out of college, no? all those cool kids would realize the ostracizing was silly and immature, right? turns out.. uh.. apparently not :-)
Alice: sadly, I hear you. I'd say overall it was a little better than back in 1997. Everyone at least had enough manners to small-talk to each other a little, but when it came to choose tables for dinner, it was back to old cliques. But then, can you blame them? If you get one evening to reminisce with old classmates, are you going to choose the ones you liked or the ones you used to pick on? Sad but probably unavoidable.
Hmm, Khris, I saw that the song was sticking too. I'll fix it, but in the meantime, just look to the left of the screen and you can play it in the audio player there. And I've never been to Vancouver, but I'll e-mail you what I know. Although as long as you're flying all the way up here, why aren't you coming to Montreal?
I had no idea you where Homophobic...
Ok Tito, #1, everybody is homophobic in high school, even gay kids. #2, I don't think anyone really realizes it. High school homophobia isn't "I don't like gay people", it's "Haha, let's pretend to kiss and it'll be funny because it'll look like we're gay, which is silly, cause we're not." In high school a lot of people thought it was a sign of openness to joke and pretend about being gay, but actually it was a sign of our discomfort with the reality of it that made us laugh. We weren't making jokes about hating gays, and perhaps in contrast to Chile, I think most of would have definitely claimed to totally accept gays. We just couldn't accept or be comfortable with what we had had no experience with, even if we wanted to.
montreal is still on top of my list, but my french is way too rusted.... :(
maybe someday, and i will let you know...
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