Just as a disclaimer, please don't expect proper grammar and punctuation in this blog post, or any other future blog posts. I'll do my best with the spelling, but everything else is up in the air. Run-on sentences, incomplete sentences, numbered lists, and bullet points are all very good friends of mine, you will meet all of them very soon.
The year was 2004.
My Senior Year at Southwick Tolland Regional High School.
15 Years Ago.
Fifteen YEARS.
Wow.
It's hard to believe that I've been out of school longer than I've been in school.
And yet, here we are.
By the time my Senior Year rolled around, my lollipop business got hit with a HUGE roadblock.
We got a new principal that year, and he wasn't a fan of people eating anything in the halls.
That's where 95% of my business took place.
He just ruined 95% of my business!
It was at that moment that I realized it was time to pack it up.
It was a good run.
We'll always have the memories.
Of the 8 classes I had left in my High School career, only three of them were required for me to actually graduate.
The other 5 were electives, basically just there to take up space.
Gym class was one of those electives.
Because obviously.
I also took Spanish 4 as an elective.
You only needed two years of a foreign language.
Yet I took 4.
Perhaps I was a glutton for punishment.
The jury is still out on that one.
The three classes that I HAD to take were English 12, Physics, and a nice little class called Speaking, Writing, and Research.
There were two versions of that class, regular, and advanced
Full disclosure, I mentally checked out as often as I could, so I had no desire for any "advanced" class.
It's still the biggest mistake I ever made in my entire school career.
The only difference between the regular class (that I took) and the advanced one was the research paper due at the end of the semester.
Two extra pages for the advanced class.
That was it.
Now I bet you're wondering why I regretted not taking the advanced class, I mean why would I regret having to write three pages on a research topic of my choosing instead of five pages?
It had nothing to do with the pages.
It had EVERYTHING to do with the fact that MY BEST FRIENDS WERE IN THE OTHER CLASS.
I didn't find out until everything was locked in.
It was too late for me to switch.
They were having fun in their class.
They were making jokes and laughing in their class.
Me?
I got put into a four person group project that included a French Foreign Exchange Student who didn't speak a single word of English.
I was then told by my teacher that my four person group was technically going to be three people doing the work, and that the Foreign Exchange Student would get whatever grade that my group got, even though she didn't have to do anything.
Also, there was going to be no "individual grade" for this group project, just one grade for the entire group.
Which meant if either of my other two group members didn't carry their weight on this project, MY GRADE WOULD SUFFER.
Long story short?
I wrote an entire radio play by myself, because my other two group members couldn't handle making a timeline where I gave them every date and event that needed to be entered.
Apparently I was asking for too much.
Mind you, every other group had FOUR PEOPLE DOING THIS.
I had one person who couldn't speak or understand a word of English, and two other full members of the English speaking tribe who were also grand masters of being inept.
It was magical.
Luckily I decided to mentally check in, you know, since I wanted to graduate and all.
My "group" got an A+.
Meanwhile my BEST FRIENDS IN THE OTHER VERSION OF THIS CLASS were telling me what they had come up with in their group.
I should have been in their group.
I should have been in their class.
But hey, it's fine.
It's not like I still think about it to this day or anything.
It's not like I've dedicated a huge chunk of this blog post 15 years later about it or anything.
Like I said, it's fine.
I also had the same teacher for English 12 and Speaking, Writing, and Research.
That meant I either had to do my homework for both classes, or skip it, I couldn't do one or the other.
I mean I'm crafty when it comes to thinking of stuff off the top of my head when it came to the whole "no homework" excuses over the years, but I'm not THAT crafty.
Or am I?
In my High School, you had the same homeroom for all four years.
All four years I never had my homeroom teacher, Mr. Tarpinian, for any of my actual classes.
When I took Physics in my last semester, that finally changed!
I finally didn't have to go anywhere for my first class of the day!
Now for those of you who went to school with me, you already know what Mr. Tarpinian looked like.
You know what he sounded like.
But for everyone else, let me give you the best possible description.
Imagine a cross between Ben Stein, and the guy who played Robert Barone on "Everybody Loves Raymond".
Boom. That's Mr. Tarpinian.
Turns out he actually knew his Physics too.
Who knew?
By the time the year was coming to a close, it was starting to sink in.
School was almost over.
For good.
College was never in the cards for me.
I never fully understood why the school that you have to PAY for, AFTER going to school for 12 years, was supposed to be the only one that "mattered".
What were these 12 years for?
I was all set.
Looking back on it now, and the amount of people that I've seen get into HUGE amounts of debt thanks to Student Loans, which they're still paying off now, and then not even get a job in the field that they got their degree in, which is what they took out the Student Loans for to begin with, makes me glad I dodged that bullet.
With the full on Digital Age we're in right now, it's easier than ever to generate revenue streams from your own home in your spare time, while still having a full time job.
And speaking of streaming..........
Let's just say all these years of video games may not have been "a waste of time" after all.......
But that's another story for another time......
There was one thing left to do before graduation.
A return trip to High Meadows!
I had not been there since 8th Grade.
It was a LONG four years, but it was just as magical as I had remembered!
To this day I've still wanted to go back there, with a huge group of people.
Once High Meadows was over, there was just one thing left on the horizon.
Something I had been looking forward to since I was in 1st Grade.
Walking down that hill.
I saw it for years.
The graduating class had their year of graduation dug into the hill.
I remember watching the years go by on that hill.
Then it finally read "2004".
This was it.
It was finally my turn.
Everyone was going to go their separate ways after this.
I grew up with these people.
Literally.
Over the past 12 years I had spent as much time with these people as I had with my family, maybe even more at times!
I was hit with every emotion you could think of.
Happiness.
Sadness.
Anxiety.
Wonder.
Hope.
It was a long 12 years.
It was a fun 12 years.
It was a time of my life that I'll never forget.
15 years have gone by in the blink of an eye.
I think I'll take a next 15 a little slower!
