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God, I don’t miss high school. I’m sure it was part of growing up, part of the awesome mental changes we have to go through that made everyone a dick. Seriously, everyone was a dick in high school. I was a dick. I’m sure you were, too. I’m sure if we could get in a time machine, the first thing we’d do, after inventing rock and roll in a high school gym in rural/suburban California, would be to dope-slap our younger selves, and then drop some science on them. Loosely, this commentary is about Ty having to deal with that, people being malicious for no particular reason but fuck all. Ty has done nothing to these kids, and yet they seek to hurt her. ‘Cause they’re dicks.
Which leads to a question: you have a time machine, DMC-1, TARDIS, phone booth… whatever. It is programed to go back in time to a moment when you are feeling vulnerable. You have a set time, let’s call it one hour. What do you tell yourself? “It gets better” is too pithy.
I think the first thing would be, “get over yourself.” I don’t think my past self would have liked that. That’s part of the getting over yourself. Go do things. Go hang out with people. Ignore brands, because brand-loyalty is a false battle. What music you listen to isn’t important; it’s important you listen to music (Hopeless Savages taught me that one!).
“You won’t figure things out. No one does. But things get less stupid. Also more stupid, in new, exciting ways.”
“Go the fuck outside!”
And, most importantly, “you have all these stories. Write them out. Seriously. Get them done.”
I feel like I would have left a list of things to check out before I left: comics to read (I didn’t really get into comics until college), music to listen to, movies to see, books to read, but I have the feeling I had to have discovered these at just the right time. I bought Paul’s Boutique when I was 15, but I didn’t understand it until college.
Anything I missed? What would you tell your past self?
[g]
I think if I could confront my high school self, I would tell myself to stop feeling sorry for myself. Focus on God and friendships and health and get off of the “gotta have a serious relationship” thing. I was on such a quest to be “normal” in that sense, like I thought it would fix all my problems or something. I was absolutely obsessed by the time senior year rolled around. It was ridiculous.
Hey, speaking of completely harmless people… you know what black-metal Joe is up to these days?
This post made me laugh. Not at the post itself, but at my highschool self. Ahh, of all the things I could possibly think to tell me… ‘dump your shitty boyfriend’ would probably be number 1. I thought I was cool as crap back then.. I’d tell myself to be more social. GO MAKE FRIENDS. Even now when I hardly talk to anyone I used to know in highschool, it would’ve been good practice. I dunno, ‘do better so you can go to college’? The HS me would’ve still been like ‘yeah right’.
I think the biggest response has been telling their younger self to get over themselves. We all thought we were hot shit when we were in high school. That’s like half the problem right there.