Control: Four Best and Four Worst Memories from High School…

I, Dalton Lewis, have to remember eight things from high school, right?

1. I attended a camp during the summer in which we went to the University of Iowa to take college-level classes because we were very bright kids. Remember, this was back when I had the most potential of all the high schoolers — I was smart, amiable, got great grades, and was expected to have a bright, sharp future. This camp was a chance to stay in a dorm for a week and eat dorm food and do insane amounts of reading. I remember the teacher, Taylor, would try to educate us about irony. We learned that people would say one thing and mean another — we studied The Old Man and the Sea and The Catcher in the Rye. Also, on one of the last nights there, some of us got together to talk about life, Sarah Maclachlan, and love in the entry area to Burge Dormitory. I met some fantastic people there who cared and loved.
2. I remember the first time I had the courage to ask some of the kids to hang out with me. I didn’t have friends the first two years of high school, and then I felt better when I went to summer camp. That led me to ask Sal if he would hang out with me. I wanted to play Magic: the Gathering, but he also asked me to hang out with him, Simon, and a couple others at a girl’s home for role-playing. We played people who were turned into vampires or werewolves or something. We had a blast.
3. Our yearly trips for a convention for journalism make number three for this list. We went to D.C. sophomore year and heard Jesse Jackson speak and went to the Holocaust Museum there. We wandered the streets of D.C. shouting Snoop Dogg lyrics and having a time. We stayed in hotel rooms and learned how to be better journalists.
4. I remember senior year English class…that was the first time a bunch of intelligent people got together and discussed literature as a group with a kind, giving teacher. Everyone else got the famous teacher who was beloved as a pillar of the community. We got the teacher who was kind and went under the radar, but he turned out to be fantastic. He had us write quotes from our favorite stories and put them on the walls. We talked about life and our emotions as much as we talked about English and what we were reading.

And the worst…

1. I couldn’t manage a romance with a wonderful person, and I broke her heart. I remember being there, the summer after high school, and realizing that I couldn’t be with her when we went to college. I stupidly decided to be stupid and told her that I didn’t love her. That was supposed to make her feel like I was a jerk and she was wonderful and did nothing wrong. It turned out to explode and make her hate me quite correctly — which would have negative consequences years down the line.
2. I didn’t have friends for two years. I remember walking the halls, knowing no one. The people at my lunch table didn’t talk to me or make friends with me. They all looked like wonderful outcasts but tried to fit in and were mean to Sal, the actual outcast. He shocked and offended them so much. It was outrageously evil of Sal to dare to talk to them. I knew immediately that I had to be friends with Sal.
3. There were these two pretty girls who went to a tennis lesson with me. They tried to talk to me, but I couldn’t formulate words to successfully talk to them. We played tennis in silence. I remembered when one of them looked at me at school. She said, and I won’t forget, “I’m a loser, baby, so why don’t you kill me.” I won’t forget that.
4. I remember all the hurting outcasts. I remember all the people who were made fun of. They had been broken from years of elementary school and middle school and knew who they were…the broken ones. Did they — did we — make it in life? No. What a joke. We suffered in the real world while the charming types who call themselves geeks and nerds made six figures out of college. We live off of parents while the other smart people live a nice life. Think about that.

Thanks, and take care, friends.