Weekend America

Memories of High School Drama

MAY 31, 2008

"Ferris Bueller's Day Off"

(Paramount Pictures)

"Pretty in Pink" trailer

(Paramount Pictures)

Remember those days when high school meant everything? There was drama around every locker. What if you don't have the right hairstyle? What if you forget your lines in the school play? What if that C in physics keeps you out of your top-choice college?

Well, you're not alone -- on the Web site Where Have All the Prom Queens Gone, readers have posted their memories of high school. We've compiled a few of their letters to help us look back at those tormented high school days:

---

My high school "experience" started out quite normally, I suppose. Coming out of 8th grade, some of my friends were the "popular" kids... some were the "band people" (like me), and others... Well, others were just regular kids.

But when I got to high school, everything changed. The kids that I considered my friends from my early years had now become part of the crowd of kids that were the jocks, the student council members and the beauty queens.

But I was no beauty queen. I had a severely recessed chin and big, round, green eyes. This was how people in my family looked, and they seemingly accepted me just fine. I became known to those kids I had never met as "fish."

I withdrew. I contemplated suicide. And my parents, rest their souls, had no clue. Not because they didn't want to know, but because I refused to bring them into my tortured world.

I would take stairs between classes that I knew they didn't take. I would come to school through different doors, and I began to limit my interactions to those kids who were more like me -- ostracized: band members, geeks, unattractive kids, kids with good hearts.

So I hunkered down with my new-found friends who thought I was fun, funny, smart, and had a clue as to what was really important. In my last year of high school, I really had a great time.

Alice, class of 1980

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I was the quarterback. I dated the captain of the cheerleading squad my entire senior year. She was jealous of the prom queen -- who was a fellow cheerleader.

I liked the prom queen too.

It's funny to think back on some of the dirty looks in the hallway between the girls.

Jaimie, class of 1976

---

She just seemed to know she was getting the tiara, didn't she? That "oh-my-god" expression and teary-eyed reaction was all put on. That slow-motion walk to stand up near the quarterback was as deliberate as a bitch slap in prison.

She had some nerve. I should have been the Queen. I'm the one who decorated the gym and made cookies for the pep club.

I was the student council president and the girl that was nice to everyone. And I had to stand there and watch her walk the walk and take the prize. Excruciating.

Amy, class of 1975

---

Going to my 20-year class reunion was important to me -- mainly because I had become a successful lawyer. I couldn't wait to throw it in their faces... to confront the kids that had made fun of me.

When I got there, those kids didn't even remember my name. That means, I've suffered all these years and they had no recollection?

How could they not remember? How could they be so impervious to the pain they caused?

Well, they didn't. And that taught me the most important lesson: Kids are kids.

Ken, class of 1982

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