my first day of high school

Danielle from Sometimes Sweet wrote a little piece with post ideas for the stumped blogger. I often feel that way (stumped) and I loved the idea of sharing a snapshot—especially the first one: your first day of high school.

My first day of high school seems really far away. It was 2006 when I entered 10th grade. I remember being so excited to start fresh in high school. During that time, I was really into hair and makeup, so I was up early to do my hair and wear too many different colours of eyeshadow. I was so stoked on my outfit that day too—something I now call my signature high school outfit. I had this pink hoodie with hearts all over it that I paired with a vintage kids tshirt, leggings, and a tutu. Yup, a tutu. I had purchased this giant white crinoline from a vintage shop on Melrose. My family had spent a few weeks in LA before school started. I remember taking a photo of myself to post as my Nexopia profile (years before the term ‘selfie’ was coined!) and being so stoked on how nice I thought I looked.

I can't believe I am posting this!

I don’t remember much from my classes that day, but I do remember my AP english class being held in the library. Somebody had sprayed bear spray or mace in the upstairs hallway where our classroom was, so it was a bit chaotic. I sat at the same table as this boy who was wearing this long, black, Matrix style jacket. He was carrying around a Discman and these giant headphones. I remember thinking how cool I thought that was, since iPods were the norm by then and nobody carried CDs. I don’t remember what disc was in his player, but I remember we started talking about bands. I was really into Le Tigre, and lo-and-behold, he knew who they were! We bonded over obscure bands, having taken Accutane for our skin, and how excited we were about our class together. We high-fived and declared that we would be best friends forever. I remember our teacher had walked by at this point, and asked how long we’d known each other. We laughed, and told her we had just met.

A photo with my best friend forever, in 11th grade.

That boy was my grad date!

Another ‘snapshot’ I have that day is from either my mentorship or band class. For some reason, my name wasn’t on the class list, and my teacher asked me if I was in ESL. To him, this would have made sense why my name wouldn’t be on the list. I kindly told him that no, I wasn’t in ESL, and that his class was in fact on my schedule. It got sorted pretty quickly, but it was pretty funny/more like racist that my teacher took one look at me and just assumed that I was in ESL. Borderline offensive, that's for sure!

Just for fun, Samantha and I at grad!

That's about all I can remember from that day. What was your first day of high school like?

-g