I did more or less finish middle school, but I just want to add a few things that I recently remembered.

Gym class.. it was a very minor part of my life, and I didn't care for it much. The two gym teachers, Mr Case and Mr Johnson were quirky. Case was a little man, young, moustache, and was fairly 80s (in the white collar way). Johnson looked sort of like George W Bush.. its the ears and stuff I think. Johnson was really weird because he'd watch the guys change for class and the big rumour that has been going on for YEARS was that he was gay and liked boys. There were only a few gym things i liked. Pretty much all of the outdoors activities were fun. I hated basketball a LOT. Football was stupid because I didn't get it and one kid (Malarney) bit me while playing.

The other big middle school thing was suicide.. the game. The sort of weird thing now that I think about it is that one of the best kids at the game, suicide, killed himself October 98. Anyway..

One of the last days in 8th grade, I was sitting on the school bus on the way into school in the morning, and we went by the high school. It hit me then that "Wow.. in just over four years I will be graduating high school!".

Then, high school came. I was listening to Nirvana and Pearl Jam, and sported jeans, t-shirt, and a flannel shirt. Backpacks were worn with one strap only, and very loose. Very little was kept in one's backpack, usually just one notebook and a walkman for me. I loved freshman year of high school.

Walking down the hallway, the flannel shirt billowing with the breeze from my walking. Nirvana on the headphones.

I continued to play in the orchestra, which was just restarted in the high school. It did not have a class slot, so it meant I stayed after school every day for an hour to play. Was not nearly as dorky as you might think.. nothing like the band geeks. The orchestra was small.. most of the kids in it were stoners actually, and it was a relaxed atmosphere.

By the end of freshman year I was hanging out with Lio and the gang in the corner of upstairs A hallway every morning before school. Sure, we were dorky freshman.. but we were NEVER bothered.

By the end of that year, Lio was sort of addicted to cigars too. So he started coming in later and stuff. Towards the end of the year, we were starting to migrate down to the cafeteria.

Classes freshman year were a little odd. I did a weird math program.. experimental type class sponsored by Texas Instruments (meaning it used their graphing calculators). The first half of the year I disliked because I was in a shitty english class (taught by the english as a second language lady) and also in a really shitty history class. I switched over into a better one for the second semester. Calliander was in the new one, and it meant I shared a gym class and freshman reading study skills class with Stone and Lio. I already shared biology with Stone.

Also in the second half of that year I went to South Africa. I was there during my 15th birthday, which was great. I hadn't had my birthday on a nice hot summer day in a long time. I was gone for around a month.

Stone got some Magic: The Gathering cards also in '95, and I naturally also did. It was a good game, but expensive.

It was fun that year exchanging porn with friends on disk. Lio had a subscription to playboy back then too.. it was funny to go over his house and be online downloading porn at 2400bps and Lio's mom would bring home sandwiches from the deli where she worked.. not really minding at all that her son and some other kid were in the dining area downloading pornography.

Stone would come over too, and we'd hang out in the AOL chat rooms trading fake pictures of nude celebrities. cough All legitimate AOL accounts of course.

I'd go to Qava's too.. he had Prodigy (legitimately) and we'd go to playboy.com or just play on his Apple IIgs.

Man.. i'm such a dork.

To be continued when I feel like it...