High School - Bye School

I live a block away from a high school. I never think much of it when I’m on my way to work except that I need to slow down lest I get pulled over for driving too fast and threatening the life of our future America. But now that it’s September and the summer is over, I realized that kids are actually back in school. They are. Can you believe it?

I drove by the high school this morning and saw all these kids up in on the front steps with their heavy book bags, trudging their sleepy little asses to class, looking like this was the last place in the world that they wanted to be and I had one thought:

I may hate my job, I may hate my life, but I am fucking glad as hell that I don’t have to go to high school anymore.

High school fucking sucks. It sucked when our parents went. It sucked harder when we went. And I can only imagine how tough you must have to be now to survive the war at home that is one’s secondary education. I mean, do you remember getting up when it was still dark so that you could be in homeroom by 7:20 am? My dad used to rip off my covers, turn on the TV to full blast on the snow channel and put shaving cream on my face and none of it worked. I was still always late in the morning.

My mom would inspect my clothes before I walked out the door and inevitably make me more late when she would get mad that I didn’t iron my jeans. Good lord woman! I’m fucking late! I don’t have time to put a crease in my jeans! Then she would yell at me and ask me what people would think of her if her daughter went out in public looking all “chewed up”. Whatever mom. Whatever.

Then I would rush to school in my little clunker (life was worse when you rode the fucking bus) and sit in my car and do my homework until I heard the last bell ring. I rushed up to homeroom and my teacher would yell at me for being tardy. You know that I was #2 in my high school class (because I took the hard AP classes and some people were fucking lazy ass motherfuckers who took stupid classes like ROTC History so they could get straight A’s and be valedictorians, then go to community college or court reporting school) and I almost flunked out of my AP English class with a Withdrawal Fail (WF) because I was always late? Fuck you, Mrs. Fritz. I still remember your fucked up, sorry ass and I still hate you for it, bitch.

Then I would think about how I forgot my clothes for P.E. and how I had to wear the “Loner” P.E. clothes that actually said LONER on them. It’s LOANER you fucking dolts. Is that place an institution for intelligence or ignorance? Then I would have to run the mile with cholas who would walk the whole thing while shouting expletives like “Fuck you, Miss Rizzo. I ain’t fucking running no stupid ass mile. Fuck this shit. I ain’t running for anyone but la migra.”

Then after P.E., I’d go to lunch and fight for a table at Burger King while I waited for my double cheeseburger, because that’s totally what I needed to be eating everyday to get more chubs club.

After lunch, I would go to Spanish class with La Senora Jameson who had an untimely car accident and was never the same after she experienced some head injuries. Mrs. Jameson taught us the same lazy ass lesson plans in AP Spanish that she was teaching to Spanish 1. Then a week before the AP test she announced, “Tenemos que preparar para el examen de AP.” Um, don’t you think it’s a little late for that? Maybe we should have been thinking about that a while ago, you crazy ho.

Sixth period, Calculus. Group work! Group work is an experiment designed to have students teach one another so that they are too preoccupied to realize that their fucking teacher is a lazy ass who doesn’t know anything about Calculus in the first place. One person does all the work (me) and everyone else copies (everyone else). I guess that class was my best introduction to real world experiences so I can’t hate them entirely for showing me how unfair life really is.

Then I would go to Forensics. Yes, Forensics. Not the kind on CSI, the speech and debate class. Because I was a DORK. I didn’t know I was a dork then, but I was. I would read all the current events magazines and practice my International Extemporaneous speeches and plan our tournament trips to CSU Fullerton and Berkeley. Forensics was the only time I had any fun in school. Que sad that reading about the Middle East crisis in U.S. News and World Report was my idea of fun.

All I could think of was how I was going to have to live this day over again. High school is like Groundhog Day with bad clothes and pimples.

So today, with school back in session, I salute you, young adolescents of the world, for your bravery and your strength. Know that it will all be over soon and you will be free to waste your life and education away in the real world where things still blow. But at least you don’t have to get up so fucking early in the morning to realize it.