Nostalgia from TV shows
by Denise Sawicki on January 2, 2008
We're watching some high school shows lately, notably Freaks and Geeks, which I love, also My So-Called Life which I hesitate to admit I find hard to get into... Anyway Freaks and Geeks sure makes me jealous of the friendships those characters had in high school. Nobody would ever make a show about my high school experience. Far too boring :). I would have idolized a person like Lindsay Weir and wished to be her, she is so sweet and kind and smart, but I was more of a Millie despite being an atheist. Boring and uptight. I also am a lot like Brian Krakow on MSCL though I don't like the guy. We've only gotten to the "Life of Brian" episode which is supposed to be one of the best but all I can say after watching it is I hate that guy. What an idiot for dumping the girl who wanted to go to the dance with him just because Angela asked to ride with him, making it clear it was not a date... She is right to call him heartless... My heartlessness is probably the main cause of my own lack of friends in high school and beyond, I was just always so focused on how pathetic I am to the extent of ignoring everyone around me...
Sigh
Just imagine if this true recollection of my life would make a good episode of a TV show. Some guy called me on the phone the summer before junior year. He said his name but I had never met him and didn't know who he was. He said he knew a friend of mine. (Can I really use "friend" for anyone I knew in those days? More someone who allowed me to sit at the same lunch table) He proceeded to ask me out. I thought I heard someone else laughing in the background. I hung up in a panic, assuming it was some joke designed to humiliate me. I got to school in the fall and found that I was in a couple classes with the guy and that he was very cute and yet slightly dorky so that I felt I might have a shot at speaking with him. Did I speak with him? No... Did I speak to the common acquaintance he mentioned and ask about him? No... Rather I spent the entire year obsessing about whether he could have possibly been serious in asking me out, and concocting weird roundabout schemes to talk to him... leaving a cryptic note in the locker of the shared acquaintance... leaving an even more cryptic note on his desk (he did not show up to class that day, that would have been humiliating if he had!) Neither note included a clear indication that it was me that sent it, that would have been too direct... I once wrote "WHY?" on the desk that I knew he would occupy in the next class period. Tell me, what could this possibly accomplish? What a relief it would have been to *speak* to someone about this situation and ask their opinion as to what the guy meant by calling me! But I couldn't do that because then someone would know I had a crush on the guy and then, I felt, I would open myself up to extreme ridicule... Anyway... my life couldn't be a TV show because there is no dialog, I am forever trapped in my head. :-P
The sad thing is that, even now that I'm married, I don't think I've matured much beyond those days :-) If I had would I really be jealous of those kids on Freaks and Geeks playing D&D?
Prayer for the Paranoid
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