Carry on, carry on: Why there’s life after high school

Our high school years are supposedly some of the “best days of our lives.” Soirees. Recollections. C.A.T. Intramurals. After-school inumans. Haircut inspection. Sleepovers. Ligawan. These are altogether milestones in one’s life that make one look back with a degree of fondness, tethered with a generous siding of cringe. Whether you found yourself bro-ing it up (or covering your tracks) in an exclusive school for boys, having catfights, falling in love with your BFF or forging sisterly bonds at an all-girls school, or living within a kind of Petri dish that is “co-ed,” surely the memories you’ve made have become a sort of adhesive that anchors you like a band of flesh would a pair of Siamese twins.

While newfound memories in an age of social media are quick to slide, high school memories during a time of self-loathing, insecurity, and spring awakening are likely to stick. They may disappear temporarily in the deep recesses of your mind but it doesn’t mean they’re no longer there. In fact, they surface given the right stimulus. Seeing a bully at a business meeting. Hearing a song you made out to during prom. Stumbling upon an old yearbook. Or seeing an old flame. While some people are able to realign themselves after high school, for others, well, high school is as good as it gets.

High school matters

The movie Young Adult tracks the life of still-hot yet haggard-looking Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron), a ghostwriter trying to finish the final chapter of a soon-to-be-cancelled literary young adult series. In an attempt to gain back her mojo after her writer’s rut and unfortunate divorce, she returns to Minnesota and tries to snake high school flame Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson) from his wife (read: basic bitch) after seeing a photo of them with their child via e-mail. When it all falls down, she is revealed to be a pathetic, modern-day Joan of Arc, summoning the ire of both Buddy and the townsfolk in the end. A not-so-happy ending.

On the flipside are the girls from Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion who, upon hearing of their school’s 10-year reunion, Romy (Mira Sorvino) and Michelle (Lisa Kudrow) conjure up a lie to come back as uber-successful businesswomen, business suits and all. Note: Romy works as a cashier at a Jaguar dealership and Michelle is unemployed. “We invented Post-its!” they say to a group of popular kids known as the “A-Group,” led by queen bitch Christie Masters. But soon after, they are found out when fellow freak Heather Mooney (Jeneane Garofalo) accidentally mentions the real inventor of Post-its. Romy and Michelle are humiliated until an 11th hour realization compels them to embrace their true selves and return, dressed in their signature tacky garb. “All in all... they’re really not bad!” says former A-Group, now Vogue editor Lisa Luder about their designs, much to queen bitch Christie’s dismay. For Romy and Michelle, this was redemption that was a long time coming.

The best days of our lives?

With both movies tackling the absurd seriousness of what happens during high school, and the kind of mark it leaves on you after, I couldn’t help but wonder if we could ever really escape that period of our lives. For psychotic Mavis, it was a security blanket that she was quick to revisit after her painful divorce and letdown from the real world, thinking that high school would always be high school, and she’d still come out on top. For Romy and Michelle, it was their desire to show the A-Group how successful they’d become, especially after being bullied, even if that wasn’t necessarily the case.

Between the two archetypes, I’m obviously more of the latter. In many ways, like the Time After Time-dancing duo, I consider myself a loser who always sides with the underdog and those in the hierarchical underside. When I transferred to Ateneo for high school, an exclusive all-boys school from Colegio San Agustin, a co-ed school, I was the student who nobody knew, the new kid, and the stranger in a foreign land. Everyone seemed to subscribe to a particular set of mores and I was the guy who desperately wanted to fit in. I went through the motions of trying to ascend the social ladder by not “being Gretchen” as the book Happiness Project says, and overhauling my image to get in with my own version of the A-Group. I traded in my khakis for elephant flares, and tried to assimilate as much as I can of what the cool kids were doing. I was both blob and lapdog — until I realized later on that I no longer knew who I was.

No rocket Science

Well, in high school, you never really know who you are. You kind of have this idea of who you are but it gets lost behind all the peer pressure and social maneuvering. The cool crowd became the litmus test of what it meant to be alive, as opposed to actually living. Scottie was wearing massive pants. I should be wearing massive pants. Larry puffed a cigarette. I should be puffing a cigarette.

It wasn’t rocket science to decipher who the crème de la crème and who the bottom-feeders were, either. Judging a person by his or her personality would’ve been the ideal but it was always easier to judge someone by the way he looked, the way he spoke, the way he acted, and the people he hung out with. That’s high school. Sometimes, even social status or money played into the picture. In trying to judge other people, you were also kind of putting yourself through the ringer.

It’s only in college where the litmus test of social relevance is shattered, and laissez faire becomes the new normal. You realize, there is no right or wrong way on how to dress, or how to act — only the standard levels of common decency. You can be whoever you want to be, and that’s okay. Which makes me wonder, “Was going through all that stress in high school worth it?”

A necessary evil

Well, high school isn’t called the “best days of our lives” for nothing. While the soirees, sleepovers, bonding sessions, and after-school inumans are easy shoe-ins for the argument, admit it or not, trying to get in with the cool kids, maneuvering yourself through so-called “peer pressure,” and walking the low road of perdition gave you that conduct-unbecoming, earth-shattering, coming-of-age high.

While you cringe at the fact that you’ve had to do all those things just to fit in, at the time, it was everything that mattered so you did it anyway — social acceptance and relevance being a matter of life or death. You look back either having profound regret that you were never able to make the grade or, well, profound regret that you crossed over but to what extent. Was this the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow?

In fact, I can say now with some amusement that I was probably a loser back in high school (more of a post-high school realization really than a reality I lived since I actually thought I was the sh*t because of all the posing) and remain unfazed about it now because of how well (or mentally unwell) I turned out to be. Which is not to say I am rid of my insecurities. But in having lived a lot of life since then, I realized that there was more to it than getting a Mavis Gary or Christie Masters’ stamp of approval. There was college where you could be a theater guy and not be considered a freak, where you could invent quick-burning paper, or rubber, and show up at your high school reunion being the success story that everyone would talk about. And then there’s the real world where anything goes, and everyone finds his own corner of the sky.

Life doesn’t end in high school, I realized. In fact, it gets better. Is there stuff I wish I’d known then that I know now? Well, not really. Would I have asked the girl I liked to prom? Who knows? Would I have not succumbed to pressure? Absolutely not. Like I said, high school will always be high school will always be high school. And I wouldn’t have had it any other way.