Control: A Quiet Visit From an Old Friend

I, Dalton Lewis, arrived in high school ready to write a four book series on the high school experience. The freshmen went to a decrepit old building a block away from the high school proper. Both were about a twenty minute walk from my home in Libertyville. My parents drove me to school on the first day. I remember sitting there, in gym class, not knowing anyone. Bullies tossed a kid into the toilet during the first few weeks. A girl screamed when I accidentally bumped against her. I didn’t finish my geography assignments and needed to cram to get a B — I almost flunked a class. I was used to nobody caring if I did my homework in middle school. The English teacher made us read short stories and then segued that to reading multiple Charles Dickens novels. In science class the kid next to me talked about sex every class.

The lunchroom was a cramped place with very few empty chairs. It was long and narrow and had two sets of long tables in every row. The first day I sat with a kid — he looked like a geek, and the other kids all hated him. They hated him like no one else because he didn’t fit in — and he didn’t want to fit in either — preferring to be an outcast. I said that I liked comedy. Truthfully I liked comedy for maybe ten seconds; I stopped liking comedy after a couple of years. He said that he loved to role-play and loved Dungeons and Dragons. I remember him being the only friend I had.

What else happened freshman year? Someone laughed at me for liking Genesis and U2 as my favorite bands. I had just finished middle school and had hated the middle school experience. I decided that life was a terrible, unforgiving, and miserable existence. No one seemed interesting or cool to me. I didn’t care about the world around me — not if it would be that cruel to me and everyone who was a loner or an outsider.

Math was geometry. In ninth grade math increased in difficulty by a huge margin. In middle school I could know the entire thing without any problem. I didn’t need to study at all. In high school I had to think hard and study hard to understand math and overcome any weaknesses in that area. I failed. I didn’t do very much of the homework and didn’t understand the math. I got bad grades at math during high school — low B’s, probably. I hated math and science during that era — and I loved history, thinking that it was one of the best classes. The kicker? I didn’t have history in ninth grade, just geography.

I remember how mad my parents would get when I wouldn’t have any friends — any friends to hang out with on the weekends. The geek from freshman year didn’t hang out with me outside of school yet. I had no friends and read fantasy novels on Friday and Saturday nights. I loved David Eddings and Leigh Eddings and Terry Brooks and Robert Jordan and all sorts of wonderful, brilliant writers who are probably remembered falsely as B-listers. I want to be one of those B-listers someday.

I didn’t write that novel series — a book for each year of high school. I wanted a melodramatic look at real life in high school. The first book would be called Frosh Step, followed by something, and then something, and then would end with Song of an Angel, I think. I didn’t really even figure out any characters or story — just the sense that the novels would matter.

In movies we didn’t have many comic-book movies, and they weren’t as important either. They were pretty good B-movies. They weren’t the biggest of blockbusters. No, we had action movies, big spectacles with huge action sequences and funny banter between the actors. We had Aliens and Terminator and Die Hard and The Hunt for Red October. I didn’t read comic books yet — that would start in college, with The Sandman.

Freshman year of high school sucked all around. I didn’t like it. I didn’t do well at it. I didn’t rise to the top of the social or intellectual cliques. I was one of the outsider losers — a geek, not a nerd. I didn’t talk to the smart kids; I talked to the people who got bad grades and couldn’t function properly. I remember that year as an awful experience.

Thanks, and take care, friends.