By:
Gonzo
Once behind those high school walls, a society, quite secular, exists. The cliques in this society are basically warring factions. It’s a megalomaniacal form of agenda pushing. The Jocks hate the Preps. The Preps hate the Burnouts. The Burnouts hate the Jocks. The Metalheads hate the Preps, and the Hackers, the ones I was eventually asked to sign on with, hate everyone.
The mentality is basically tribal. However, since I graduated high school, I went on my own twisted sociological adventure/trip. What I miss most is the high school scene. Maybe it’s some melancholy with drawl symptom. What ever it is, I miss it. Like a mourner paying respects, I had to return and pay my respects.
I thought I would be able to get some insight as to why I was missing it so much. When I walked into the building, all emotion left me. I wasn’t even concerned about seeing teachers I had. The thing that struck me most was one dimensional, flat, everything was. I imagined how Death himself must feel while roaming in some nameless graveyard.
As I walked the halls, some places gave me a warm, familiar feeling. On the flip side, there were cold places. Those cold places felt like someone with icicles for fingers was plucking my spine like an out of tune harp.
I couldn’t help but wonder if those warm, familiar feelings were from some old memories. Maybe it was some remnant of a good, heart felt laugh I was having with good friends, or maybe it was the memory of some kiss I did my best to make last forever.
When I walked into my second home, the auditorium, I again heard the applause I so loved hearing when I worked the tech crew for the stage shows. The one thing I missed was that warm, dusty smell I loved. All I could smell now was antiquity, but I knew the auditorium was smiling because one of its own had returned.
When I did leave, I walked to a familiar spot: The door. This was the door by the auto shop that lead out to the students’ parking lot. The door had nothing special about it, but it was where my greatest fear in high school came to life. It was winter of ’89, if my memory is right, and I was on break, alone, from doing my tech crew work. I was looking out of the windows in the door at the huge piles of snow in the parking lot, occasionally being washed out by blowing snow. From inside the auditorium, I could hear someone’s tape player playing U2’s With or Without You. Then the fear, a simple one, came. It was me being married, working a dead end job, living in Byram, having two kids, and dying with nothing to show for it. As my life turned out, my fear couldn’t be further from the truth. I never did get that dead end job, no women can keep their interest in me long enough for them to settle down with me, I don’t like kids, and Byram is just some place I end up in. That fear is just something vague and fading slow now.
I quietly walked out of my old high school, but I still had no explanation as to why I missed it so much. I had a lot of theories about it, but nothing substantial came from it. It could be part of something I’m not supposed to understand. It may be an infinite part of my romantic psyche. Maybe it’s not for me to question.
With my soul purged, and maybe a demon or two exorcised, I got in my car to leave. As I drove away, I could hear a song playing. It was Candlebox’s Far Behind, or maybe it was The Cars’ Since You’re Gone.