High School Meme--1969

[sartorias]

Once in a while I do these when it's hot, and they cause me to look back down the years. And if the questions make me laugh.

1. Did you know your spouse? No. He would be just starting university at the then-new U at Riverside.

2. Did you car pool to school? I walked the three miles to school, usually at five a.m. so I could get in writing time

Comments

[kalimac]

The absolute opposite of a party animal, and the last thing I would have done was go to any school social event, most especially the Prom. Like you, I didn't have a social life until I discovered the Mythopoeic Society, and I was allowed to borrow my mother's car to drive to that.

[sartorias]

The Society was the saving grace for so many of us.

[cmcmck]

Cultural imperialism anyone?

I don't know what three quarters of these mean!

Perhaps I need to re post the Britmeme?

[sartorias]

It's definitely USAcentric!

[kalimac]

jock = hearty in Oxford slang. Big on school sports, school spirit. Cheerleaders = jump around and yell in front of the stands during games to whip up enthusiasm. Prom = ball, i.e. school dance. Mascot = equivalent to the team names you may know from US professional sports. School colors = those you have.

[marycatelli]

Prom is the big, fancy dance held specifically for seniors -- or juniors, but those would be separate, "junior prom" and "senior prom." There would be only one (possibly of each) for you in the course of your school career.

There were school dances, and then there was the much larger and more lavish proms.

[sartorias]

Our school was HUGE--graduating classes every semester because there were so many hundreds of us. Out of all those people, I know of two pairs who met and are still together from high school: one is my brother's best friend and wife, and the other is my sister's best friend and husband. (The latter is black, so they went through all kinds of nasty drama, but stuck it out through all those decades. Now they're just another old couple, so at least *some* things change for the better.)

[whswhs]

My answer to all of these is Does Not Apply. I had a weird history: When I was in ninth grade, I decided that the rules requiring haircuts were arbitrary, and since I had long found them unpleasant, I refused to get one. Midway through the year, the school administration told me that I was suspended until I got my hair cut. I think they may have expected that I would give in in a few days or weeks, but they hadn't given me a reason to comply, so I didn't, and no one ever tried to follow up as far as I know

[sartorias]

Oh, wow, you truly lucked out!!!!

[starshipcat]

Fellow feel on #18. Oh god, much as I long to go to the Gus on the Moon timeline, I most emphatically do not want it to involve having to redo childhood. The lack of agency alone would be miserable. And then there's the crap like being expected to be completely cool with having adults yank the rug out from under whatever plans you made, or conveniently forget promises they'd made, but holding you to your promises with a rod of iron. Or getting caught in "left hand not talking to the right" situations where adults give contradictory directions, and then getting punished for "backtalk" for trying to explain that you were doing as the other adult told you.

Dealing with all that sort of nonsense is bad enough when you're an adult. But combine it with the sheer powerlessness of a child -- no, I really don't want to have to go through it again, even if it would be that much harder to insert me into the other timeline as an 18-year-old just starting college.

[sartorias]

No, the awfulness of double jeopardy and the fifties "Do what I say, not what I do" would be hell to go through again.