So glad I'm not in Highschool anymore

I am SO glad I'm not in highschool anymore! 

This morning I went with Elizabeth to drop her off to her session ( yes, this time I knew which quadrant I was in...but...no I wasn't driving...ha ).  I went to 'the walmart' to pick up a small CD flip case to put DVDs in for my train ride home to PEI on May 25th.  Okay I dygress...that has nothing to do with Highschool...I don't there was even a walmart...sorry....the walmart when I was in Highschool...okay...dygressing again...

So I finished early and I went back to the Highschool where Elizabeth was doing her session.  I sat in the parking lot with the windows down, damn nice day today, listening very loudly to Nellie MacKay ( check her out if you haven't  www.nelliemckay.net ).  So, as the highschool 'kids' were getting out of class and heading to their cars they would hear this loudish music coming from my car and they would stare and me with that glaring 'I'm in highschool and you're weird' kinda look and man...it brought me right back to highschool..which..btw..I mostly hated...if it hadn't been for music I'd have been lost....in many ways.  but yeah...the biggest thing I hated about highschool was that it was cliquey, a popularity contest, geeks were made fun of, fat kids were tortured, etc, etc...bitter much? ha...

I learned very quickly after graduating from highschool that all the torture, pain and uncomfortableness of going to school everyday was pointless and completely unnecessary.  We didn't have a clue in highschool.  No..not 'us' the geeks, or the fat kids and not even 'them' the popular ones, the cool kids, the 'socially successful' kids....we all were clueless....we were all just people at the weirdest times of our lives, in between adolesecence and adulthood, ignorant, discovering, learning, failing, hurting, taking, all in an effort to survive everyday. 

I'll be the first to admit that I was more in the range of geeky fat kid than popular kid. I wished so much to be like 'them' and to be 'socially successful'.  We all judged back then.....I'll be willing to bet that even those we deem as 'popular' felt much like I did but just had other ways of hiding it. When I think about it...man....the pressure they must have felt to stay cool, good looking, popular, successful, damn....makes me look back and enjoy my life everyday at the back of the class and every lunch hour sitting in the back corner of the band room with my handful of music friends ( as I type this I'm listening to Paul Christian playing crazy cymbal noises on the Jimmy Swift Band CD onwardthroughthefog ...good memories with my good friend Paul in highschool ).  

And speaking of that 'success' of the popular kids...I worked so hard in highschool everyday just to make it through the day without getting made fun of and struggling to get by in my classes, etc, etc that it really made me a better person ( I mean that in the most non-cliche way ).  Struggles later in my life were 'easier' because I was better equipped to handle them.  I was so used to being by myself that when I began making close friends in my last year of high school and 1st year university that it felt like gold! it was much more appreciated by me, than if I had tonnes of friends all throughout school...

oh right...forgot to finish a thought...speaking of that 'success' of the popular kids....I can't tell you how many of those popular kids I saw over the years doing the same highschool behaviours and working at the same highschool jobs and here's the thing...for those kids I predict, assume, judge, opionate that for them....highschool was the best it'll ever be for them....until they realize it..then they'll change. But until they they're in their 'glory days' in highschool...forever....crrrrrrrrrrrrrrraazzy!!!

and here I am this geeky, string bass player, fat kid, who got all growed up and made a life for himself - graduated from University, had some pretty amazing life experiences through and without music, graduated top of his class from his computer programming class, works for the East Coast Music Association, survived my father's death which in the midst of met his future wife, who had he known her in highschool he would have NEVER approached such a beautiful girl - why would she ever go out with a fat kid like me?

One of my key moments in my life was at my highschool graduation - it was a phenomenal day a) I was getting out of highschool and heading to University to study Bass b) I found out that I graduated with Honours ( 80% on the nose ) and c) one of my fellow students looked at me sitting in the 'Graduating with Honours' section and said 'Deryl?!?! You got Honours?!?! Man...I thought you were stupid!!'

It was then that I thought and realized...we never had a clue...no one, including myself, really knows what I'm capable of ....and my wonderful life is just beginning.

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