Pressure

I remember High School. Peer pressure. Academic pressure. Pressure to be cool. Pressure to find your own voice. Pressure to conform. Pressure to get into a good college. Pressure to wear the right clothes. Etc, etc, etc. Not to mention that at my high school there was a fair amount of racial tension from time to time.

A high school student is subjected to enormous amounts of pressure. It can't be easy.

I though I was the bomb back in high school. I tried to be so bad ass. I was friends with the geeks, the gangstas, the mutants, the artists, the jocks and anyone else who would say hello. I dated one of the most popular girls in school. I was one half of the dynamic duo with my best friend, Gary; we were inseperable. I starred in the school plays. I wrote on the school paper. I had a car. I was funny. I was cute. I even recorded a rap single that played on WPGC's home jams.

Yet there were those individuals who either didn't like me, didn't know me or just didn't care to know me. It's always the case. You can't make everyone like you. I look back through my yearbook and I see some faces that I remember but I don't recall ever even having conversations with those people. I don't even know if they knew my name. But thanks to FACEBOOK these people now have requested my friendship. Back in the early nineties I may not have been cool enough, or smart enough to warrant a hello in the hallway but now, years later, I am offered the validation that I probably worked so hard for back in high school and there's no pressure.

So, yes, I did befriend Mr. "Best Body of The Class of 93", among others, because none of us are still the same people we were in high school... hopefully.