Prep School

>>Prep School<<

Some say that what you don’t know can’t hurt you.

False.

I went into a new school knowing nothing about the institution, the teachers, the students, hell even the town it was located in, and it hurt me a great deal. The following is why.

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It’s a nasty habit, smoking cigarettes, but someone’s gotta do it. We’ll always have our smokers, drinkers, druggies, down-and-outs, bums and what have you. They’re always going to exist because people crave things. What I craved was an excuse to be cool. I had never been cool, and I’m sure that I have never been since, but hanging out around the prep school’s steps dragging a cig from my mouth at 14 years old made me cool.

I needed that. Why? Because I was the new kid, and I needed an identity. Everyone else already had theirs: the jock, the nerd, the bully, the ladies man, the flake, the dealer, the trumpeter. It goes on and on. Smoking cigs wasn’t the only identity available, and I sure as hell wasn’t the only student vying for it’s occupancy. It was easy to achieve and I relied on no one but the lazy Arab at the shell station near the beach. He gave approximately zero fucks. I was in.

I was also smart - intelligent would be a more apt word – yet without any evidence existing at the prep school to stand alongside me, I had years until I could claim that particular role.

On August something or other in 2004, I flicked my cigarette into the bin under the steps and made my way into a terrifying new world. Everything else about me was ship shape: tucked in collard shit into a pair of pressed khakis with a black leather belt holding everything together. Black leather shoes at the bottom and trimmed hair at the top. I was a Catholic high school student, and I was fucking terrified of what that meant going forward.

“Son, you’re late. Where are you supposed to be?”

It couldn’t have been past 7:50 and some hag was already giving me lip about the clock. Fuck the clock. I didn’t say that.

“Yes ma’am I’m sorry. I really don’t know. This is my day here-“

“It’s everyone’s first day, son. It’s the first day of school. Yet every other boy has managed to find his way to first period.”

No other help or guidance, simply a statement of my fuck up. Thanks, I gathered that much. Bitch.

“Well I’ll gladly move to wherever I need to be if you can just-“

“Come with me,” the hag snapped and ushered me in with a less-than-gentle hand behind my shoulder. This was going to fucking blow.

As soon as I fe;l in behind this woman who was clearly more than a teacher, my attitude and confidence simultaneously vanished. I was no more than a pimple-faced, wide-eyed child among men and women with zero clue as to what to do. I’ve never enjoyed being lost.

When I was six years old my mother took me to Sam’s club, and I got lost because I was six years old and it was fucking Sam’s club. Sam’s club is Disneyland to a six-year-old hyperactive mind that fed on stimulation and input. This was one of the first times I had been left alone in my life. Even though it was a mundane experience in that I neither broke anything nor injured myself, I can remember every detail of what was said as if it happened yesterday, repeating everyone’s lines over and over again in my head.

I’ve always been able to do that. I hold on to words like gold and am therefore filled with the transcripts of countless numbers of personal encounters in only twenty-four years. It gets crowded in a hurry, and a lot of other things the brain would tend to hold on to get lost in the refilling process.

I’m shit at remember the locations of things, namely my personal items. I on the verge of needing a 24/7-care nurse to follow me around carrying a bag of all my shit. That’s the type of stuff I want when I make that hypothetical million dollars. Then I wouldn’t take thirty minutes to leave anywhere as I’m fishing my keys out of the refrigerator or drying my wallet because I forgot it in the pants I washed the night before. You know, normal shit.

These three things combined into one chaotic feeling of helplessness and existential paranoia as I was lead through this catholic high school where children and young adults went to school together.

It was incredibly surreal, like being on an after-school special and you’re the one kid who gets sent off in the second season for smoking cigarettes. Except I wasn’t smoking cigs, I was just sleep-walking my way to 100’s on every piece of school work for an entire year at the public middle school. I wasn’t being “challenged,”. I finished Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in two weeks during the schoolday.

In fourth grade. I was 10.

A lot of people did this. A lot more didn’t.

A lot of the people who did were in classrooms all around me that first day of catholic prep school. All of them were boys. This was another thing I’ve never figured out about my parents’ decision that summer. We had just moved to the area the year before and I knew like 1 kid in the entire town.

AND HE WAS ABOUT TO BE AT THE MIDDLE SCHOOL. The one they were pulling me out of after a year because I was doing too well. Teachers were grading mine first and then using it as a template for the rest of the class.

I never had homework in the traditional sense because it was always finished before I got off the bus in the afternoon. Always. For this reason and not cigarettes my parents “experimented” with a life-changing amount of money for a year at Saint Fuckhead: Patron Saint of Racist Entitled DoucheBags.

It was really St. Dimitriov College Preparatory. College was IN their name, how the fuck was I was supposed to have a normal high school?

I feel likeI’m talking about myself a lot. Back to this woman. The librarian-like administrator with some years on her who had absolutely no time for my or anyone else’s bullshit.

“I don’t know who he is, but this young man is now five full minutes late for first period. Wherever that is can you please make sure he finds it, Mrs. Pattie? Immediately.”

“Certainly, Mrs. Wetz.”

Mrs. Wetz’ eyes snapped from her wristwatch, to me, and ended in a curt nod toward Mrs. Pattie behind the receptionist’s desk.

“I’lll be floating around the Resource Center all morning, so you can just your lunch order to me whenever.”

“Alright then!” brightened Mrs. Pattie, finally looking up from her computer with a half smile at Mrs. Wetz who was turning to leave. “I expect better tomorrow, young man.”

She honestly did not give a shit about my name. I was a Young Man #4569 to her.

The ringing from the meeting metal of the office closing behind Mrs. Wetz hung in the air as if it actually weighed more than the air. After it settled, I was left in the most rigid moment of my young life

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All around me there must have always been dozens of people just figuring it out a lot faster than I could. I had severe social anxiety. I was afraid of being in a new situation because I couldn’t prepare my anxious mind for what was about to happen to it. It had never happened before. The anxiety became so bad that I began to extensively research … (continued…)