School Daze

I had to try this one. It's from the Spinster via Jess.

Thinking of myself back then is...hilarious. Or sad, depending on my mood.

What year was it?
1978-1981

What were your three favorite bands (performers)?
The Who
Springsteen
The Clash

What was your favorite outfit?
Blue flannel shirt over a maroon T-shirt, sans or avec sleeves. Jeans. Army boots. This was three years before Big Country, mind you.

What was up with your hair?
For the first half of high school, I was in an endless battle with my father to have my hair long. Not Duane Allman long, mind you, I was talking Elliot Eastman or Jeff Beck long. It was a lousy idea, of course - my hair was naturally extremely oily, so wearing my hear long was a constant disaster (as my junior yearbook picture captured at its greasy nadir). In my junior year, I had the barber give me a National Guard haircut - and I got so many kudos from the grrls at school, I kept it.

Who were your best friends?
Nuke, Rich, Dwight Rexin, Jay Kisch, and the guys from my band, of whom more next.

What did you do after school?
Play practice, speech team meetings, band practice. The "Band" was "Blitz", featuring the Gallagher Brothers (Mitch and Ron) on guitar and drums, Dan Sad on bass, and me playing guitar. We were a garage band - but what a garage. The Gallaghers' dad restored old cars for a hobby; the garage was nicer than some apartments I've had over the years. Oh, the band was a lot of fun too; a couple of our gigs are among my favorite memories from that time of my life. Mitch Gallagner promised to burn a couple of cassettes of our old gigs onto CD at our 20th reunion, 3.6 years ago. Yo, Gallagher - how's it coming?

Where did you work?
10th grade, I had a paper route, and worked at a candy and tobacco warehouse. 11th grade, KEYJ radio. 12th grade, couldn't find a job to speak of.

Did you take the bus?
I lived four blocks from school. It was a very easy walk. My dad (who taught at the school) and I used to walk to my grandma's place for lunch a couple of times a week - she lived about a block from school. Lunch hours have never been better.

Who did you have a crush on?
I had so many crushes back then. I was cursed by my innate shyness, which rendered me unable to act on most of them - and my knack for ONLY acting on the ones that were doomed from the start. It was a crummy trait that I carried well into adulthood.

Did you fight with your parents?
Yeah, but I can't remember about what. Must have been grades and my band. I think I remember getting into a fight about music - that's a shock, huh?

Who did you have a CELEBRITY crush on?
Chrissy Hynde, circa the first two Pretenders albums.

Did you smoke cigarettes?
Never. Not only that, but all throughout high school, I had exactly one beer. Afterwards, I bought like three packs of Certs, broke them up and swizzled them around in my mouth for half an hour; so convinced was I of my father's sensory omniscience.

Did you lug all of your books around in your backpack all day because you were too nervous to find your locker?
Backpacks were not "in" back then. Either were tote bags. I remember hauling hella brutal armloads of books around in a pile. And once, in 11th grade, hauling mine and Laurie Fritz' books, when she had a broken leg. Scary thing is, I wasn't even trying to impress her...

Did you have a clique?
My clicque was the "un-clique". Most of us were guys and girls who eschewed clicques, but had friends among all the clicques - jocks, motorheads, cheerleaders, brainiacs, burnouts, drama people, nerds - we moved among them all (except the cheerleaders).

Did you have "The Max" like Zach, Kelly, and Slater?
My parents never let me do the roller rink. The closest we ever had to a building like that (as opposed to Shale Beach, out at the Island at Jamestown Reservoir) was the Pizza Hut on Tenth Street and Seventh Avenue in Jamestown. We had a ritual back then, Rich and Nuke and I; we'd get up at 6AM, go running, drink nothing but Coke (to get the stomach acid going), then hit the Pizza Hut noon buffet like three carnivorous tornadoes. Layne Poseley would keep refilling our beverages (this in the days before free refills were de rigeur), and we'd just eat and eat and eat... I think our record was twenty slices, six large Mountain Dews, and half a dozen pieces of Garlic Bread. Each. Then we'd drive out to Shale Beach and hang out for the rest of the afternoon.

Admit it, were you popular?
Nope. I wasn't unpopular, but I was hardly "in". I didn't get invites to any of Alicia Collins' or Kathy Helgaas' parties, anyhoo.

Who did you want to be just like?
Mick Jones. The one from the Clash, not Foreigner. Actually, people used to say I came across like James Honeyman-Scott (the Pretenders' first, amazing lead guitar player), down to the point of even having a passing resemblance back in high school. I'm not sure if that was a good thing - it took Honeyman-Scott a lot of smack and coke to achieve that look, and I got it naturally...

What did you want to be when you grew up?
A writer. Probably a news writer, more than anything.

Where did you think you'd be at the age you are now?
I never thought that far ahead. Seriously; when I was 18, I had no conception of myself past, say, 25.

Posted by Mitch at March 18, 2005 08:00 AM | TrackBack