A few years ago as a writing exercise, I started an autobiography. It was fun to revisit high school in memories, and write about them 20 years later. I recently found the file, and thought my sophomore year memories were at least worthy of a blog entry. I was 15, and it was a time of discovery, both in new friends and new music. Robert Smith and Andy Partridge would become heroes, and nothing would be the same after 1982.
I’m posting it ‘as is’ and I’m not going back to correct any mistakes. There are a hundred things I wish I could change, but that defeats the purpose. This is a simple ‘copy & paste’ endeavor.
I’m posting it ‘as is’ and I’m not going back to correct any mistakes. There are a hundred things I wish I could change, but that defeats the purpose. This is a simple ‘copy & paste’ endeavor.
* * *
Bayshore High was a pleasant school with a solid teaching staff, and I remember being quite excited when I first started and immediately became involved in extracurricular activities like yearbook and newspaper. I even joined the swim team in my freshman year, but decided to forgo it the next when I realized that I hated 6 a.m. practices in very cold water. I also looked ridiculous in a tiny blue Speedo with my lanky adolescent body, and never won a single race the prior year anyway. At one point I even contemplated the then still growing sport of soccer, but in the end choose to concentrate on my schoolwork and artistic endeavors. Although I’ve always appreciated many different sports, I’ve also known that I just wasn’t made to be a jock.
My sophomore year brought many positive changes, as high school was never a chore to me and I actually relished going. My friends would always make light of my fondness for school, and I had perfect attendance three of the four years I attended. I’d often arrive early and leave late. My grades were always A’s and B’s and I had found a friend in an art teacher that encouraged me to explore my talent. I had been told all my life that I could draw well, but never really investigated what I was capable of until Mrs. Turner showed me how. Of all the teachers I’ve ever had, she was easily the best. The last I heard she had left education and was the mayor of a small island right off the mainland called Anna Maria. Much of my free time was spent in the art room, and if anyone wanted to find me, they’d know where to look. Sometimes I would go to school early just to get some drawing time in. I was soon Mrs. Turner’s student helper and assisted with anything she needed.
Not only was the art room a place of solace to me, it would also be the place where I would meet an influential figure in my life, my good friend Jeff. On the first day of school that sophomore year, I ended up sitting next to Derek, a misfit from Harlee Middle I shared a few classes with that would soon be a friend and constant companion in various forms of juvenile mischief. He introduced me to Jeff, whom he’d met earlier that year in a scuba diving class. Jeff was unconventional in both dress and demeanor, and I immediately bonded with him. While I had been listening to Van Halen and Def Leppard, he introduced me to bands like U2 and the Cars, who at the time were struggling for radio airplay. Jeff was the first kid at school to have a punk haircut, a Ramones-like bob that hung heavy in his eyes, making him the target of every pinhead jock in school. Before long, everything changed with me. I was listening to different music, dressing in more outrageous fashion, and had a revelation about the kind of person I wanted to be. I wanted, as my mother would kindly put it, to march to the beat of a different drummer.
Jeff and I were soon spending copious amounts of time together. He was a few years older and had a car, so we weren’t hampered by transportation woes. Most of the time we’d go to his house and listen to records, and literally spent hours lost in a sonic haze of British men singing strangely. It was in his bedroom that I first heard Bauhaus, the Cure, XTC, and the Smiths, and I quickly grew from a simple admirer to a full fledged expert on the growing indie scene. Jeff even had a short lived band called No Social Cliques that played a mean Hungry Like the Wolf and That’s What I Like About You. We also spent much time with Derek who, despite his strict religious upbringing, introduced me to marijuana in the spring of 1982. I had watched my brothers and their friends get high for years, but I had never partaken myself. I smoked my first joint with Derek and Jeff behind his father’s real estate office, and remember fondly going to McDonald’s afterwards, where we sat in the kiddie section and acted like complete fools.
* * *
*post note: On September 2,1997, my friend Derek stopped his car on the Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay, Florida and jumped. It’s been said his empty vehicle was found with the doors open and the stereo on full volume. That sounds exactly like Derek. He was 30 years old, and much too young to leave us. There’s a Temple of the Dog song called ‘Say Hello to Heaven’ with lyrics that always make me think of him:
“He hurt so bad like a soul breaking, but he never said nothing to me.”
*post note: On September 2,1997, my friend Derek stopped his car on the Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay, Florida and jumped. It’s been said his empty vehicle was found with the doors open and the stereo on full volume. That sounds exactly like Derek. He was 30 years old, and much too young to leave us. There’s a Temple of the Dog song called ‘Say Hello to Heaven’ with lyrics that always make me think of him:
“He hurt so bad like a soul breaking, but he never said nothing to me.”
I miss him all the time. The world is a smaller place without him
