growing up

What kind of person did you used to be in high school?

/ Shane / 4 Comments

Lately when I am talking to people, I have been playing a game in my head: what was this person like in high school?

High school is such a funny time in our lives. 4 short years with about 20 years of repercussions (at least!) immediately to follow. In high school, everybody is broken down into cliques or types. It’s very one-dimensional, as if your entire personality can be summed up in one word: nerd, jock, goth, prep, whatever it is. But when you’re in high school, it also happens to be kind of true. You just don’t have all that much personality yet. In fact, in the name of belonging, your assigned label kind of becomes your defacto personality. You dress the part, pick up the speech mannerisms, start to like the same types of activities, etc. One might argue that in high school you don’t even have a personality yet, so in the meantime, you just use the one assigned to you.

But when you get to be adults, all of that sort of goes away (the personality thing goes away, not the deep psychological scars…or maybe that’s just me). I think a lot of it is just growing into your personality. It turns out that people aren’t so one-dimensional. Shy people find confidence, outgoing people learn there’s always someone cooler than you. Jocks find out they like computers, and nerds find out they like sports (ping pong is a sport, right?) Everybody kind of realizes we all have more in common than we thought. Adulthood is the great equalizer.

Nowadays, if I run into someone from my high school (virtually or otherwise), I’m just excited to have run into someone from my high school. Suddenly people who I never even spoke to in high school are like old friends. We can reminisce about our school or hometown, and I’m honestly interested to hear what they’re up to.

So lately as I’m talking to people, I start to wonder: is this person someone whom I would have talked to in high school? What were they like? Would we have gotten along back then?

It’s harder to guess than you would think. Nerds are probably the easiest to pick out, but it’s not a sure thing. Besides, haven’t you heard? These days it’s cool to be a “nerd” (as a true, not-in-quotes nerd who suffered for it, I take a little exception to that, but that’s another blog post).

It stands to reason that at least some of the people I talk to as adults wouldn’t have given me the time of day as high schoolers (it stands to reason, because at least some of the people I talk to as adults are girls).  Just playing the odds, some of you had to be cheerleaders, or captains of the football team, or drama dorks (Drama Queens? What’s the PC term for someone who haunted the drama department in high school? Phantoms of the Drama Department?), or even just band nerds, which were a whole separate breed of nerd that ran on a sort of parallel track, but didn’t cross over.

So what were you like in high school? Anybody find it particularly humorous to think back on how they were perceived back then vs. now? Any Mean Girls want to fess up and admit that they wouldn’t have talked to me back then?

Saying Goodbye to the Homestead

/ Shane / 4 Comments

The house that I grew up in is no longer in the possession of my family.

Overall I would say that it was less emotional than I would have guessed. Certainly it is weird to think I will never be back in that house again. Obviously there are so many memories, etc. But, on the other hand, I hardly went back to that house as it was. My mom had already moved, and my sister was living there for awhile, but we didn’t really go and stay there. And I guess I’m old enough to know that nothing like that lasts forever.

That being said, there have been a few times where a particular memory surfaces, or when I was driving around Fort Wayne and I thought, “Hmm, I’m never really going to need to go to that part of town again”, or drive down that street or know how to get to that particular thing, etc. It’s not just the house, it’s practically giving up my entire hometown. The parts of town I go to now look nothing like they did when I lived there. I might as well be going to a completely different place. It seems like every day that goes by, I have one less tie to home. It’s kind of weird to think about.

However, all of this minor weirdness is overwhelmed by relief for my mom.

The fact is, our neighborhood went way downhill. When we moved in, the neighborhood was full of old people. Those old people died. Some of them were replaced by good clean families like us. Some of them were replaced by low-lifes that used to live in some of the surrounding neighborhoods.

I think my mom had an overly optimistic attitude about the neighborhood; she saw the good and didn’t notice or ignored the bad. I think the neighborhood sucked, and was getting suckier by the minute. There was a drive by shooting down the street. The hotel behind us had an explosion when the meth lab caught fire. The 3 houses across the street from us all had their copper pipes stolen. The house next door was abandoned and housing meth makers/sellers/addicts. Now, the neighborhood’s not as rough as that actually sounds, but it can’t be denied that those things are facts, and those facts don’t add up to a nice neighborhood. I almost feel bad for the poor person who bought our house, because they might not realize they just bought one of the nicest, kept up places in the middle of a starting-to-be-not-that-nice neighborhood.

So I’m not trying to diss the neighborhood. It certainly wasn’t that bad when we were growing up there. The shopping center used to be a nice place (even the movie theater!) I’m just trying to say, thank god she got out when she did. I don’t see home prices rising in that neighborhood anytime soon. And lets not forget that the house across the street was on the market for FOUR YEARS. This could have gone much worse. You can see why my mom was getting nervous as it got close to the final sale. She even moved back into the house, to make sure nothing happened to it.

So, I’m sorry to see this house and all of its associated memories leave our possession, but I’m more happy that my mom was able to get out before it was too late, and get some money out of it. If that wasn’t the situation, maybe the sadness would be more of a factor, I don’t know. But as it is, I think it all worked out for the best.

(By the way, I just discovered that if you tag a post “Family”, “growing up”, “Home” and “meth” like I just did, WordPress will helpfully suggest the related tag “Washington DC”. Jeez, take that our nation’s capitol!)