Good morning my friends. Today we talk about my senior year of high school and the summer leading up to it. This was an eventful time for sure. Both good and bad. It had a profound affect on me for not only the short term, but for a majority of my life. As I stated before, parts of this are going to be a bit difficult for me to discuss. Please enjoy joining me on this journey.
Working at McDonald’s had helped me to come out of my shell a bit. I am by nature a bit shy with self-esteem and self-worth issues. However, it seemed the more time I spent at work, the more open I became. With the revolving door of employment that fast food seems to breed, I was meeting and becoming friends with people I never talked to in school on a regular basis. Quite a few females in particular. I learned fairly quickly that my form of “flirting” though, lent me more to acquiring many female friends and no girlfriends. Let’s just say I ended up with a lot of women who “loved me like a brother.” Hey, at least people seemed to like me.
Alcohol also began playing a larger part of my summertime fun at this point. I knew a guy who knew a guy who ran a liquor store, so it was easy to come by. We began partying at various locations around town. The occasional random corn field. Someone’s hunting land. One spot in particular was known as Rabbit Trail. It was a large gravel pit where parts of it were no longer being used on a regular basis. This meant that some holes had filled with water and there were trees growing up around. It was almost like camping by a pond. This is where I was the last time I drank beer. The beer was Black Label, it was nasty, I got violently ill, and I then switched to Schnapps and Wine Coolers. Insert joke about a guy drinking wine coolers here.
Another common tradition was road tripping. As you age, you realize just how dumb this was to do, no matter how much fun you had doing it. One of my friend’s brothers had an old Dodge Diplomat. We’d pile in with some adult beverages of choice and head out on the back roads to just drive around and drink. We even made custom mix tapes that were specific for this action. I can remember one night in particular where we decided that we wanted to collect “No Trespassing” signs. This of course is illegal and not recommended. We came across one that was metal and attached to a metal post. One of my friends decided he needed that sign, and when it wouldn’t come off, he wrestled it to the ground. Needless to say, the sign won that round and he woke up the next day trying to figure out why his hands were all cut up. Ya, we weren’t the sharpest tools in the shed.
This summer was made up of a lot of this kind of stuff. Working, partying, hanging out at the lake, you know, normal teen age stuff. Green Lake is just a few minutes away from Ripon. On the South-West end of the lake is the beach of County Park. This is the common hot spot in the summer for just hanging out. Due to my larger size and self-esteem issues, I tended to be one of those guys who never took his shirt off, even when in the water. Regardless of this, I still had a lot of fun out there.
When the summer came to an end and it was back to school, it felt different. This was our senior year. This was it. Our last time being “forced” to go to this stupid place. Our last chance to tear things up before becoming men and women in charge or our own lives. Our last chance to stick it to the establishment.
We came in with the brilliant idea that as soon as we turned eighteen, we’d start writing out own excuse notes to get out of classes. They couldn’t tell us not to smoke, we were Seniors. Nobody was going to tell us what to do. We knew better than those “old” people. You could just tell when my friends picked me up that first day back that we all were thinking the same thing. We were in charge now. This attitude may be why I racked up so much detention this year, but I’ll dig more into that at graduation time.
If I remember correctly, we made it two days before we skipped our first day of the year. There was a concert down in Milwaukee and we were not going to miss it. Somehow it took us the entire day to get to it. We were walking around a mall in downtown Milwaukee when an officer approached us and asked why we weren’t in school. I saw my friend’s chest start to pump up, but my mind was working faster than his and I said, “we aren’t from down here and we don’t start until next week.” Probably a good thing, because my friend was kind of an idiot and I can’t imagine what he was going to say.
Early in the school year, Moraine Park Technical College had something they called the “Skills Olympics” where students were invited in to participate in different technical tests. My two closest friends and I decided we needed to sign up for this because it was a day off school. We all signed up for the welding part. I did the arc welding part. My welds weren’t pretty, but my metal box held water and couldn’t be broke with a hammer and pliers. One of the other guys did MIG welding, and the one who didn’t set himself on fire in class did the gas welding test. We then spent the rest of the day walking around campus with my boombox in my duffel bag listening to Metallica. Much time was spent sitting outside the Cosmetology area for some reason. None of us won by the way, but we did get reprimanded by no less than four instructors for our music being too loud.
I had missed enough school by Christmas break that I had been placed on probation. If I missed one more day, I was going to be suspended. I thought it was kind of nice of them to award me with three free days off for missing so many days, but my parents did not see it the same way as I did. So once break ended, I started becoming the model student. Sort of. I was at least there every day. We were creeping up on February where I was going to turn eighteen and was going to put my whole “I’m an adult and can write my own excuse notes” plan into place.
But then my life took a turn. Wednesday, January thirty-first. I had gone to lunch with four friends to McDonald’s. During lunch it was discussed to take the afternoon off and go to Princeton. One of my friends’ uncles lived there and would have beer and booze. Due to my probation situation, I had to pass. One other friend was failing a class and had to take the test that day to try and bring his grade up, so he passed also. The other three dropped us off and headed out.
I ended up walking home from school that day. I didn’t figure they’d be back in time, so I thought nothing of it. When my best friend didn’t show up for his shift that night, I just figured he got too drunk. I got home and gave him a call to see how things went, but the person on the other end, who’s voice I didn’t recognize, told me he couldn’t come to the phone. Something didn’t feel right. I didn’t sleep very well that night but couldn’t quite figure out what was going on.
The next morning, I got ready for school and went to sit on the front porch to wait for my ride and hopefully figure out what was up. A different friend of mine showed up and asked if I needed a ride and my heart sunk. I guess I knew something bad had happened, but I didn’t want to believe it. My friend asked if I knew what happened. I said, “something bad or you wouldn’t be here.” But I had no details.
He filled me in on more of the details. There was an accident. One of my friends was in the hospital in bad shape. The driver was ok and being released. My best friend didn’t make it. I don’t remember speaking another word the rest of the day. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t process anything.
I got to school and put my stuff in my locker. The next thing I would have done is wait for those two to show up and walk a few laps before classes. Only today they wouldn’t be coming. So, I just started walking by myself. A couple of other friends joined in behind me. I picked up a few more as the first lap continued. By the end of lap one, I had about fifteen people behind me. I don’t think those people even realize how much that simple act meant to me.
I didn’t go to any classes that day and didn’t come back after lunch. I instead went to my friend’s house to see his Mom. He was the only child she gave birth to, and I couldn’t imagine what she was feeling at this time. I gave her one of the biggest hugs I’ve ever given and sat with her and cried while listening to her tell stories of when my friend was child. Times before I even knew him. Other relatives showed up and I worked my way out. The family had things to attend to.
I walked the two blocks back to my house not knowing what to do, what to think, how to react, or even what I “should” feel. I was full of anger at the driver for what happened. Wasn’t he paying attention? I was full of guilt for not going with them. I could have seen the danger and warned the driver. I was full of sadness over the loss of one of the best friends I’d ever had. I was about to turn eighteen, an adult, and I felt more lost than I’d ever felt before.
The friend that showed up the day after it happened to drive me to school showed up every day after that. He started bringing me to his house at lunch time and his Mom would make us lunch. We had been friends before, but we became much closer through all this. I don’t know what would have been my outcome if he hadn’t stepped up. He pulled me out of my funk and helped me through the most difficult period I had lived through at that time.
The school year continued, but it wasn’t the same. I tried to avoid the hallway where his locker was. I stopped volunteering to pick up attendance sheets because I didn’t want to walk past the classroom I saw him in every day. I tried to visit his grave at least once a week and have a cigarette with him and fill him in on what happened that week. Sometimes I’d play him music. He was the one who introduced me to Metallica, so I figured I owed him that much.
Because of what had happened, they dropped my probation. With the attitude I had at that time, that just meant I’d miss a lot of school going forward. I knew my grades were good enough for me to pass as I continued to do well on tests, I just didn’t feel like being there most days. The detention would pile up because I usually didn’t show up to serve it. As we reached graduation time, it caught up with me. I was told that if I wanted to walk across the stage with my classmates, I would have to serve detention the two weekends prior. I didn’t care if I walked the stage as long as my diploma had all the signatures on it, but I knew my Mom would have been devastated. So, for two weekends in a row, eight hours on Saturday and eight hours on Sunday, I sat in a room while the Vice Principal would occasionally pop in to make sure I was still there. She was new that year and took her job very seriously.
The school stepped up and did a wonderful thing. They had determined that my friend would have had enough credits to graduate, so they allowed his Mom to walk across the stage and get his diploma. I doubt there were very man dry eyes in the building during that moment. I welled up just now thinking about it.
Well, we made it through my high school years, and now you understand why this year was so hard for me to write about. I hope you enjoyed this story and I hope you tune in next week as I get to tech school and continue my process of becoming one of those “adult” things.
As always, we’re all in this together. Luv Luv.