High School Confidential

Recently, one of my friends on Facebook, and a former classmate, had been scanning in and posting photos from high school, and it stirred some memories.
But I don't have any photos easily at my disposal. Now, I know what the Loara grads reading this are thinking: "How can the guy who carried a camera with him for two years during high school not have photos?" Well... I think I tossed all the negatives. Besides, they were all in black and white. It's either that or they're at my parents house, so they're not going to be easy to find.
And seeing as my 20-year reunion is this weekend, I figured I'd throw out some of the memories that have stuck in mind all these years.
First off, lets get one thing straight, looking back, I was a lot like Jason Biggs' character in "American Pie," I was a lot like a band geek, but was never in the band. I did play sports, and was on the newspaper, but I was a bit of a geek. Oh well, what are you going to do?
Anyway, on to some of those memories, most of which are worth looking back and laughing. Oh, and in some cases, I'll omit the names to protect the sorta innocent.

* Freshman year of baseball, and we played a game at Mater Dei. On the way back from Santa Ana, we were stuck in traffic. Alongside our bus pulled a car with a, for lack of a better term, hot blonde inside. Everyone took their look and was pretty pleased. And apparently she was reveling in the attention to a certain degree. Well, until one person (and yes, I remember who) took it a step further. He started communicating the woman with sign language. And he asked for a little *ahem* sexual favor.
At that point, she had a bit of sign language for him: The Bird.

* The soccer team had its share of adventures. There were the brawls with Los Al (including one that involved some food being thrown from our bus). There was one player finding relief on the sideline at Esperanza. And speaking of Esperanza, Eric Smith took out some frustrations by stepping on the back of one of the Aztec players. And Matt Drager helping lead the group trying to get the bus driver to leave without a coach freshman year. And we nearly made it out of the school's parking lot, too.

* The day after the junior-senior Powder Puff war (why did they ever cancel that game?), one of the participants was mulling the results of the night before. And our cheerleader/songleader was disappointed that many of the water balloons she filled didn't pop when she threw them. I mean, why wouldn't the condoms she was using as water balloons break? By the way, how cool was it that our class swept the two Powder Puff games (well, except for all the serious injuries suffered)?

* Watching the baseball team implode in 1987 after the two players were busted on the Lompoc trip. That was probably the best major sports class while we were there, with their football and wrestling league titles. They probably would have won the baseball title if not for the transgressions. The football team's Empire League title was the last by a school not named Los Alamitos or Esperanza until those two schools were moved out to a higher league.

* Seeing the reaction of everyone the morning of the Northridge earthquake. I was in zero period baseball that morning, and we had gone a long run, so my legs were a little wobbly any way. But standing in the junior court it was pretty funny to watch everyone react. All at once, everyone abandoned their lockers and ran to the center of the court. It all happened in an instant, but it was a sight to see.

* Freshman year having Coach Conroy as my history teacher. The man was, how do I put this delicately, the worst teacher ever. The first semester, we were using Mrs. Wilcott's classroom during her conference period, and she hated him. There were only like 14 of us in the class at the time, so it was hard to miss any of the things that were happening. His personality alone made you feel a little uncomfortable around him, almost like he was gay, but overcompensating for it by wanting to seem interested in the girls in the class. It was creepy.
One day, he made a bet with some of the people in the class (I was Switzerland, and was to be the judge in the bet) over "Little House on the Prairie." To settle the bet he sent me to the coach's office to track down the TV and VCR so we could watch it in class. As a freshman, going into the coach's office (and seeing Coach Hill there) was quite intimidating. But I brought it back to the class and we watched. Second semester we were in Mr. Braun's class and then he was gone at the end of the year.

* Then there were some of the other teachers.
Mr. Barron and his whole Chester A. Arthur obsession.
Mr. Sadler's poor woe-is-me monotone voice that I had to sit and listen to during fifth period (after lunch) for two straight years. That was a struggle staying awake.
Mrs. Kretsinger's sharp knowledge of the English language and diagramming sentences. To a degree, she sent me on the way to my life as a writer. And the class was great because we didn't read any of the books the other English classes were reading.

That's all I have for now. If I come up with any others, I'll add them. And if you have any stories, feel free to post them here in the comments.