time of your life  

Posted by the lamplighter


in less than a year, it would be ten years since i was in high school...

i don't really know how to sum up what my entire high school experience was but, at that time, it seemed like the most important time of my life.

i was eventually forced to transfer from a private Catholic school into a public high school. looking back, i believe that i should have been warned. although i spent most of my growing years in a private school setting, it's my experiences in the public school which defined me - it made somehow better and a little bit worse. 

i learned how to lie without batting an eyelash. i learned how to smoke effectively that by my third day i was already a chain smoker. i learned how to drink alcohol, and not just those girly screwdriver mixes. i learned hard, liver-smashing drinking. i remembered how we mix Red Horse (one of the stronger local beers) and gin bilog (a cheap but wicked variety sold for about twelve pesos per bottle at that time) and drink to our hearts content - or as our allowances would be able to afford.

i much rather not go into the dirty details as it may be taken against me.

but i lived a high school life devoid of self control. i could even say that i lived on the edge. even the day before our graduation was a testament to how much we've pushed the definition of problem teens. one of my closest pals nearly got shot.

i realized then (or sometime after that) that the life i want to live is nowhere near where i was. i was a loud, rebellious, and ignorant drunkard. and it was too bad because i really did well on my NSATs. i realized that i wanted to go to college. i wanted to finish my schooling and i wanted to do a better job in living my life. 

i got into a good college, finished a degree, took a post-graduate course and passed the board exams - i think i've done so much better now. 

so i guess high school is really just a time in one's life. whether you were called a brainiac, a dork, a slut, a clown, a rebel, or an idiot - it's okay. it's just high school. it's what you do after it that really counts. 

This entry was posted on Monday, August 31, 2009 and is filed under , . You can leave a response and follow any responses to this entry through the Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) .

1 comments

this is something that i can really relate to. we may not have done the same things (never tried smoking) but i have done things that i hope my daughter will never do once she reaches that age. now that i am older and wiser, there are days that i wish i could turn back time and change the past so i could serve as a good example for my daughter but i may not have the life that i have right now if i did things differently.

thank you for this post. it made me bear in mind that i have learned from the mistakes that i have done in the past. i am now a completely different person and living the life i have always wanted.