High School Years-Chap.5 – The Shell Shatters
In my 11th grade gym I actually got to be in the Co-Ed class. Ironically enough, the Seniors that year were not the competitive jocks like my brother’s grade. They were rather eccentric and to me, totally fun to be around. One day in class, we were playing volleyball in the gymnasium when the ball was hit to me and I deflected it up into the Basketball Scoreboard. It made a deafening rattling that silenced the entire gym. Everyone turned to look. In the past, this would have been totally mortifying, but at this particular instance I raised my hands in victory and said “Go Me!”
Everyone started laughing and then went back to what they were doing. I thought to myself, ‘that wasn’t so bad. I was the center of attention, got everyone to laugh at me and I didn’t die. That ringing scoreboard was like a bell awakening a whole new social entity.
Shortly after that, my parent’s basement was no longer for our games. It became a high school social hangout. On New Year’s Eve, my parents went out or away and my friends hung out in the basement like always and didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. I think there was a 6-pack of Coors Light between the 5 of us there. Later that week one of our friend’s Laura confronted me and said I heard you had a shin-dig and didn’t invite me. I told her it wasn’t a party but she just claimed I was trying to downplay it.
On a tangent, she had invited me to her Sweet Sixteen earlier that year where I reconnected with Jason after a long time of not hanging out. He was only in classes the first half of the day and then went to a vocational study building for Photography in the afternoons, and then afterschool he rehearsed with his band “Tempered Steel” (Heavy Metal, get it?)
Now back to the story, it was then and there I realized that Laura was pretty high maintenance, but I accepted her for who she was. Anyway, as she voiced her annoyance to not being invited to everyone and anyone who would listen, they all commented about how they were excluded too. Funny how our small regular get together of 5 turned into this Elitist High School party. I told them all that I’d invite them next time. As it turned out I had to invite them almost every other Friday or so for the rest of high school. Our group of 5 turned into a rotating group of 20. Now any given weekend, Denver, George, Sean, Alan, and I were joined by Jason, his band roadie Mark (whom I had met in Art class when he moved into town in 9th grade), Dan, Laura, Sue, and Michelle. Plus, any other people who happened to be free that night whom happened to stop by.
It was still a relatively small social circle I that I had run with and it suited me just fine, but by the spring, when Denver convinced a few of us to crash a party that a girl he knew was throwing, things went to a whole new level. Going to a party where I didn’t know the girl who was throwing it made me nervous, but within moments of getting there, an upper classman, that I lent lunch money to earlier in the year saw me and said “Hey Kerry, C’mere. I owe you for paying for my lunch,” and handed me a six pack of beer. I don’t know the social structure of high school as a science, but when a Senior hands a Junior a 6-pack of beer out of the blue it earns the general respect of the school. I didn’t become really close with any more people, but I was on friendly terms with everyone. For the first time, there wasn’t at least one bully out to pick on me just because I was scrawny. (Although that guy, Mike, from a few chapters ago, would easily have still fought with me but he was kicked out of school. If you ask me, I’d say went to Juvie where he had plenty of time to lift weights, because he was huge and still wanted to kick