{"id":518,"date":"2009-06-30T13:28:19","date_gmt":"2009-06-30T18:28:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lopeyland.com\/?p=518"},"modified":"2009-06-30T13:28:19","modified_gmt":"2009-06-30T18:28:19","slug":"20-years-20-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/?p=518","title":{"rendered":"20 years, 20 thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In honor of attending my 20th high school reunion, here&#8217;s 20 thoughts on high school.<\/p>\n<p>20. Yes, I put the APATHY acrostic in the yearbook on purpose.<\/p>\n<p>19. Yes, I was ready to be slapped by the former yearbook editor.<\/p>\n<p>18. Yes, it would have been worth it.<\/p>\n<p>17. There is a large part of me that hated high school. It started with moving from Oklahoma on my birthday before the 9th grade year, so there was a HUGE amount of transition that the natives didn&#8217;t have to deal with. I already felt weird about myself, since I was the stereotypical nerd, and being overweight and out of place didn&#8217;t help matters.<\/p>\n<p>16. The fact that I went to college and got Ds in classes made me feel that I never really learned how to study. Was it that high school was easy, or that I never chose to challenge myself?<\/p>\n<p>15. I didn&#8217;t challenge myself. Science fair projects seemed like such a complete waste of time.<\/p>\n<p>14. At the reunion, everyone looked pretty good. It takes a certain amount of guts to even attend a reunion, especially if you never felt like you were part of a group in school.<\/p>\n<p>13. I was an oddball in high school. There&#8217;s an issue with being smart and wearing glasses right around the time of Van Halen&#8217;s &#8220;Hot for Teacher&#8221;. No matter how much you try and not feel like a nerd or a geek, it&#8217;s painfully obvious that you are one. As such, you start feeling that &#8220;no one to sit with at lunch&#8221; phenomenon.<\/p>\n<p>12. It&#8217;s amazing how much change has happened in some people. Some of my friends have made HUGE changes in their lives. Some others&#8230;not so much.<\/p>\n<p>11. I wonder beneath the surface how many people are happy with their lives as they stand now. Are they doing what they wanted to do? Has their lives changed?<\/p>\n<p>10. I&#8217;m pretty sure I&#8217;m doing what I wanted. I&#8217;m also sure that I chose what I wanted to do for the wrong reasons, and as a result, I&#8217;m in a bind.<\/p>\n<p>9. High school was such a different animal 20 years ago. There wasn&#8217;t as much emphasis on passing tests; the TAKS came online during our time, and now that&#8217;s become almost the entire focus of teaching.<\/p>\n<p>8. There apparently are plans to get rid of most of the old high school and completely change it from a set of buildings with walkways inbetween to a monolithic building. One of the little bits of charm of Boswell was the outdoor lockers, and that will be gone.<\/p>\n<p>7. I didn&#8217;t get a chance to talk to some people at the reunion. I wish I had in some cases. In at least one case, I made a choice not to talk to someone. There wasn&#8217;t any reason other than having dealt with the type of person before and not wanting to (a) get tied down and (b) not engage in pointless small talk. I don&#8217;t want to be a jerk, but I also don&#8217;t want to open any old, firmly closed doors.<\/p>\n<p>6. Romy and Michelle was a pretty good, extremely unrealistic movie.<\/p>\n<p>5. Why would we have a reunion where people would want to talk in a confined, cramped place with a DJ blaring the best of the late 80s?<\/p>\n<p>4. Was there any good music from the late 80s? In retrospect, not really. I think I&#8217;ve lost more brain cells in remembering lyrics to &#8220;Come On Eileen&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>3. I don&#8217;t look back on high school with much fondness. However, I think it&#8217;s just the system that grinds everyone down and puts them into defined boxes more than people.<\/p>\n<p>2. As far as the people go, I have nothing but respect for them.<\/p>\n<p>1. I&#8217;ll be ready for the next one. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In honor of attending my 20th high school reunion, here&#8217;s 20 thoughts on high school. 20. Yes, I put the APATHY acrostic in the yearbook on purpose. 19. Yes, I was ready to be slapped by the former yearbook editor. 18. Yes, it would have been worth it. 17. There is a large part of &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/?p=518\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;20 years, 20 thoughts&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lopeyland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}