It's Friday, the heat and humidity are gone for now and I feel like reminiscing about a long past week away that, on paper, should have left a pile of corpses but really only did some damage to a liver or two. Back to the category of "why are you still alive" I bring you high school graduation week!! Kids, don't read this!
After five long years of secondary education within the fine walls of Don Bosco penitentiary, I mean Catholic High School, my buddies and I were being released into society to find our own paths in life. To set forth into the world at large, to be contributors, visionaries and leaders...or some shit like that. I don't recall much from my 'learning' as we were pretty pickled for much of the last year or so, but I never thought high school was about that. It was a big social club. To that end, it worked well.
The ceremonial and official part of the graduation process held a few memories that I cherish to this day, the gathering after the handing out of diplomas was a spontaneous celebration of the friendships that were forged over the previous years. What started as a picture with diplomas in hand for the parents turned into a mosaic of friends lined up against the wall with smiles all around. Sadly, most of these friendships didn't last but a few did and I guess that is something. The prom was a blur, not because we were drunk but because we didn't care about the prom. The prom was a mere formality prior to the after party was where we could truly celebrate. And boy did we celebrate. The dumpy hole in the wall Ascot Motel was our haunt that night and we were truly lucky to have not ended up in jail. Climbing twig like trees to get to the second floor balconies, walking in on strangers, Willie Nelson wafting through the air...how did we not end up in jail? Clad in shorts and t-shirts, cummerbunds and bow ties I'm sure we young men looked positively GQ like next to our female friends still resplendent in pink and blue ball gowns. We were such jerks back then but we certainly did know how to have good time. The party lasted until sunrise when the police finally did arrive to break up the festivities. Good times.
That Saturday morning everyone had a job to do, a sacred task to make the transition from one party to the next. For you see, we were heading to Dave's cottage for the week to really celebrate with the boys. So all the tuxedos were given to one person to return. Some people were responsible for food and so on. I was the keg master. Since my parents had graciously allowed me to use the car for the night I loaded up two full size kegs into the trunk of the venerable Chevy Nova to sit proudly in the bath tub at the cottage. I recall my dad coming out to inspect why the trunk was propped open and asking me why there were two barrels of beer in his car. Ha...we should have got barrels. Freaking kegs barely lasted one night. So much for the beer budget.
The idyllic dawning of summer in rural Ontario was shattered that Saturday afternoon as we raced through sleepy towns with music blaring and testosterone hopped up on the high octane mixture of anticipation and fading teen angst. Once again, how did we not end up in jail. Locked in some hick jail cell awaiting our parents to come bail us out....maybe jail would have been the preferred place. But once again, the whole fools and drunks thing comes to mind. We lived to tell about it after all.
To detail every happening that weekend would require a lot more effort and memory searching than I can muster right now. Certainly some of the events fall into the category of you had to be there, like our superior rendition of the Sanford and Sons theme while munching on foie gras and sipping Sauternes. Or, BBQ hot dogs and beer. Whatever right. The musical virtuosity we displayed that night was impressive...or really awful. One or the other depending on how drunk you are when you listen to the tape that was secretly made that night. In-between prodigious amounts of beer guzzling and everything that goes with it we always ended up tied to the boom box with our music and our version of foolishness. It all made perfect sense in the moment, 30 plus years later I still chuckle at our glory moments during our glory days.
Some of the highlights outside of drinking and singing were the mini bike rides through the woods. I still sport a faint scar on my ankle when I went over the handle bars on the bike. Fucking front breaks! When I got back to the cottage and put my foot down there was a funny sloshy sensation, I was confused. And then mildly grossed out when I poured the blood out of my sneaker. Somewhere out there is a picture of a dozen or so white asses hanging off the balcony as we mooned the world. The empty kegs sitting as dead soldiers to our 'manifest destiny' of beer. Someone throwing up an entire hot dog, I mean whole. Seriously man, how did you get that dog down there in one piece and then back up in one piece? And what made you think that anyone needed to see it?
As the days went by the constant drinking and partying claimed combatants in small numbers. Roberto Duran's infamous "no mas" was cause for equal amounts of ridicule and a desire to stop as well. No pressure to drink here buddy boy. We drank and we drank until on the very last night there were only three of us left standing, I mean drinking. It was not a pretty site but it certainly was an odoriferous one...for many days after actually.
As you may recall, and if not you can refresh your memory here ROOI, this was the summer that closed out our youth. It started with the cottage after graduation and culminated with the end of summer bash highlighted in ROOI. Gone was the safety net of high school, somehow we were supposed to become functioning adults and I don't recall anyone actually thinking they were ready for it. I wasn't. What the hell did I know about the world ahead? As it turns out most of us turned out OK. We went our own ways and figured things out. Marriage, kids, mortgage payments and RESP's. Slowly but surely we turned into our parents to varying degrees. We forged our own lives and new identities, no longer 16 of us to run rough shod over the world. Some of us forged new lives in far off places and did things we didn't know we could do. The beauty in this chaos of life is that we never new what tomorrow would bring for sure...best laid plans and all. But we clung to the idea of who we were. Those memories, as evidenced by my posts here and the stories I like to tell, are our testaments to what mattered back then. When I had my little mini reunion back in June during my U2 weekend, we, of course, talked of the good old days...the glory days alongside what we were doing now.
In the closing moments of that day I was talking to Steve and Dom and we found that common ground that seemed to bind us all, 30 years later and a lifetime of experiences between us, we still have no regrets for that time of our lives. We were young, we were stupid and smart and we, as only the young can do, lived large with impunity in our own way. It truly was our glory days.
Ciao
D
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