Ah, the teenage years. High School, that time of fun, learning, hormones and uncertainty.
I remember well my first day at High School, Tracy and I with our new uniforms and school bag, photos were taken both at my place and at hers. We were starting on the road towards adulthood - well, we thought so, taking the bus with the other big kids, finding our way around the school, finding each other at lunch time... Our year was the biggest at Thornlie 420 of us - in first year, as a result there had to be two lunch breaks, which meant due to the way that the form classes were set down, Tracy and I did not actually have lunch at the same time. This meant that we quickly had to find ourselves some new "best" friends...
That's not to say that we did not stay BFF - 'cos we were and we would be.... it just meant we had to find other folk to eat lunch with - for the first year at least. Because the school had a fairly large catchment area we met lots of knew people with a variety of backgrounds... All good in my opinion.
The teen years are always full of anxt, getting to know new people - finding a place in a bigger social group, meeting people that I had not seen since grade 2 - amazingly enough Jacky remembered me - it was probably the name and ofcourse my face really hasn't changed all that much.
During the first year of high school I got to go on the first of my long holidays to Iceland. Mum and I went in August and came back in November - I still managed to get ok marks for that first year of school - I think in those days schools and teachers were far more flexible in their approach to time off - especially if it was to see the world - or at least a small part of it. My holiday in Iceland is subject enough for a post of its own so I won't go into it here, nevertheless, it changed me a lot, not only physically - I put on heaps of weight, but also mentally in knowing how much my dad meant to me (he did not come with us and I missed him sooo much), and also in getting to know my eldest brother again. The getting to know one another was limited - but my view of him and our relationship as siblings changed. I also got the chance to get to know cousins that would become my greatest friends, without that trip I doubt that I would have ended up here today. It was the first seed of what would become a need to keep coming back and re-building on those friendships and the love that I have for this country.
The next years of high school were fraught with all the anxieties that a young teenage girl has, the first kiss, the first dance - with a boy - the almost boyfriend and then the friendships that were and are such an important part of my life. All the problems of the girlfriends with their boyfriends - acting as the go-between, trying to help them sort themselves out, the long long phone calls after school every day - as if we hadn't talked long enough during the day! I would hate to think what it is like today with sms and mobile phones, facebook and all the rest. The learning was fine and most of the time fun, apart from English in years 11 and 12, but hey, you couldn't always have the best teachers. I did a fairly heavy maths, chem, physics combo with English and Geography as the fun stuff. Needless to say the test results showed that the fun stuff was the stuff that mattered the most...
During our growing up years Tracy and I made a pact that we would go to Iceland together when we finished High School. Tracy quit after year 10 and went to work in child care. I continued on and finished - and knew that once the finals were done that Tracy and I would get on that plane and go to Iceland. Thinking back on it now I realise how much our parents trusted both us and the world. In February 1980 Tracy and I flew to London......We were 17.....
1 comment:
Ugh, I didn't like High School. I was painfully shy, a size 0, needed braces and had stringy brown hair. But my senior (12) year was better, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. I would never have even thought of going halfway across the state much less the world.
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