June 2: 18
On the morning I turned 18, which was Jan. 3, 1991, I slid Alice
Cooper's greatest hits into the ghetto blaster beside my bed and pressed
play. I'd been planning the ritual for a little over a month. I wanted
the first song I listened to as an 18-year-old to be the Coop's song
Eighteen.
Lines form on my face and hands
Lines form from the ups and downs
I´m in the middle, without any plans
I´m a boy and I´m a man.
Maybe Alice aged differently than I did. I didn't have any lines on my face when I was 18. I do now.
It was a weird year. Like Alice Cooper, I was a boy and I was a man.
The previous year, some genius on my high school's yearbook committee had decided I was the best candidate to pen an essay on what it was like to be in Grade 11. I think I wrote something about how Grade 11 is your last chance to not be an adult. The next year was Grade 12 and you were going to turn 18 and that meant that you were an adult and you could vote and drink alcohol (legally) and - in Canada anyway - get your name in the paper if you kill someone (let's all raise a collective middle finger to that useless piece of legislation, the Young Offenders' Act.) The girl I dated briefly in Grade 12 hated that essay and, in a damning letter to yours truly, said the essay was "so typical of (my) immaturity."
Well, hard to argue with that.
-
And what did I do on my 18th birthday? Full disclosure: got rip roaring falling down drunk. I have never been that drunk before and I never want to be that drunk again. My friends, Cade and James, took me bar hopping. On the way home I fell into a snowbank, tried to break into a real estate office, had a brief crying jag because I was convinced that my ex-girlfriend was shacking up with some dude named Dexter in Montreal, and called my best friend's girlfriend (twice) to tell her she was fat. Cade took me to his place and I threw up in his sink before falling asleep on his bathroom floor.
-
Probably the best thing ever written about high school is in Stephen King's debut novel, Carrie. There's a scene where Susan Snell, one of the main characters, is talking to her boyfriend, Tommy Ross. She asks him if he enjoys being so popular and he says that high school is no great shakes. "It seems pretty cool when you're in it but once you're out, you realize it was no big deal."
Yes, and I am here to tell you that I remember very little that I learned, academically, in high school. I remember trying to learn about polar-covalent bonding in Chemistry 10/20. I remember discovering Philip Roth's Defender of the Faith in English 30 and declaring it to be the best short story ever written. I still think so 23 years later.
But my fondest memory of 18 has nothing to do with girls or getting accepted into the Rosebud School of the Arts. It was the magic show that I was allowed to do for two Grade 12 English classes toward the end of my high school career. It was amazing fun and for the first time ever at Bishop Grandin High School, I felt like a superstar. I spent most of my time there (a) thinking I was a loser and (b) thinking that everyone else thought I was a loser too. The truth was that I was spending my time (a) thinking I was a loser and (b) everyone else had far more important things to think about than whether or not I was a loser.
I cannot read my high school diary today. The angst in it threatens to overwhelm me.
And at this point, I thank whoever it was who suggested that I spend today writing about 18.
-
I'm 41 now and I am older than my mom was when I was 18. If that's not a mindblast, I don't know what is.
-
I spent half of 18 in high school, four months in college, and two months in summer vacation. That summer I got a job at T-shirt printing store called Ts n Prints in the since demolished MacLeod Mall at the corner of Southland and MacLeod in southwest Calgary. A Wal-Mart now stands in the place where I used to make personalized T-shirts and license plates.
I earned minimum wage. The store did very little business. At the end of the day, the store's owner, Don, would call to find out how much cash I took in. Once I only brought in $1.50. "Ouch!" he said. The most successful day saw $200 come in. I reported that to Don and he said "Well, better than a kick in the ass with a frozen boot." He later told me he had to make $150 a day there just to break even.
Miraculously, my job lasted the entire summer. I kept worrying I'd get laid off because Don couldn't afford to keep the store open. Then I discovered, quite by accident, that Don was a pioneer in bringing pornography into the province. He owned about half a dozen XXX movie houses in the city. I assume, kept the fledgling T-shirt store as a tax deduction.
-
Today, I'm jealous of 18-year-olds who have their act together. There's nothing wrong with dreams if it's backed up with action.
-
When I was 18, I wanted, more than anything, to be respected. I began churning out home movies, comedic sketches and crude bits of parody, which I would inevitably distribute among my circle of acquaintances with the hope that they would declare me a genius. It doesn't work that way.
-
Someone else turns 18 today and I hope he is a better and wiser and happier 18-year-old than I was.
Lines form on my face and hands
Lines form from the ups and downs
I´m in the middle, without any plans
I´m a boy and I´m a man.
Maybe Alice aged differently than I did. I didn't have any lines on my face when I was 18. I do now.
It was a weird year. Like Alice Cooper, I was a boy and I was a man.
The previous year, some genius on my high school's yearbook committee had decided I was the best candidate to pen an essay on what it was like to be in Grade 11. I think I wrote something about how Grade 11 is your last chance to not be an adult. The next year was Grade 12 and you were going to turn 18 and that meant that you were an adult and you could vote and drink alcohol (legally) and - in Canada anyway - get your name in the paper if you kill someone (let's all raise a collective middle finger to that useless piece of legislation, the Young Offenders' Act.) The girl I dated briefly in Grade 12 hated that essay and, in a damning letter to yours truly, said the essay was "so typical of (my) immaturity."
Well, hard to argue with that.
-
And what did I do on my 18th birthday? Full disclosure: got rip roaring falling down drunk. I have never been that drunk before and I never want to be that drunk again. My friends, Cade and James, took me bar hopping. On the way home I fell into a snowbank, tried to break into a real estate office, had a brief crying jag because I was convinced that my ex-girlfriend was shacking up with some dude named Dexter in Montreal, and called my best friend's girlfriend (twice) to tell her she was fat. Cade took me to his place and I threw up in his sink before falling asleep on his bathroom floor.
-
Probably the best thing ever written about high school is in Stephen King's debut novel, Carrie. There's a scene where Susan Snell, one of the main characters, is talking to her boyfriend, Tommy Ross. She asks him if he enjoys being so popular and he says that high school is no great shakes. "It seems pretty cool when you're in it but once you're out, you realize it was no big deal."
Yes, and I am here to tell you that I remember very little that I learned, academically, in high school. I remember trying to learn about polar-covalent bonding in Chemistry 10/20. I remember discovering Philip Roth's Defender of the Faith in English 30 and declaring it to be the best short story ever written. I still think so 23 years later.
But my fondest memory of 18 has nothing to do with girls or getting accepted into the Rosebud School of the Arts. It was the magic show that I was allowed to do for two Grade 12 English classes toward the end of my high school career. It was amazing fun and for the first time ever at Bishop Grandin High School, I felt like a superstar. I spent most of my time there (a) thinking I was a loser and (b) thinking that everyone else thought I was a loser too. The truth was that I was spending my time (a) thinking I was a loser and (b) everyone else had far more important things to think about than whether or not I was a loser.
I cannot read my high school diary today. The angst in it threatens to overwhelm me.
And at this point, I thank whoever it was who suggested that I spend today writing about 18.
-
I'm 41 now and I am older than my mom was when I was 18. If that's not a mindblast, I don't know what is.
-
I spent half of 18 in high school, four months in college, and two months in summer vacation. That summer I got a job at T-shirt printing store called Ts n Prints in the since demolished MacLeod Mall at the corner of Southland and MacLeod in southwest Calgary. A Wal-Mart now stands in the place where I used to make personalized T-shirts and license plates.
I earned minimum wage. The store did very little business. At the end of the day, the store's owner, Don, would call to find out how much cash I took in. Once I only brought in $1.50. "Ouch!" he said. The most successful day saw $200 come in. I reported that to Don and he said "Well, better than a kick in the ass with a frozen boot." He later told me he had to make $150 a day there just to break even.
Miraculously, my job lasted the entire summer. I kept worrying I'd get laid off because Don couldn't afford to keep the store open. Then I discovered, quite by accident, that Don was a pioneer in bringing pornography into the province. He owned about half a dozen XXX movie houses in the city. I assume, kept the fledgling T-shirt store as a tax deduction.
-
Today, I'm jealous of 18-year-olds who have their act together. There's nothing wrong with dreams if it's backed up with action.
-
When I was 18, I wanted, more than anything, to be respected. I began churning out home movies, comedic sketches and crude bits of parody, which I would inevitably distribute among my circle of acquaintances with the hope that they would declare me a genius. It doesn't work that way.
-
Someone else turns 18 today and I hope he is a better and wiser and happier 18-year-old than I was.
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