I attended high school at Los Amigos in Orange County from 1983-1987. It was, at times, an enjoyable experience. I was quite tall, taller than all the girls in my school until a freshman came along who was taller and a lot less coordinated than me, so sadly for her she garnered a lot of the teasing from that point onward. I was also quite curvaceous but didn’t have a

lot of confidence, so I slouched a lot. My friends thought I was fat – I weighed 150 pounds at 5′ 11″. Um, I was skinny, but I believed them, since they all were 5′ 2″ and 105. I was naïve, not realizing that while some girls were being friendly to my face, they were not-so-subtly making fun of me behind my back. I desperately wanted to fit in with the “in crowd” but I also wanted to be friends with, well, my friends, who were the math geeks, Key Club members and A students. I was just like so many other girls across America.

A large number of the girls who had been my peers for several grades became cheerleaders or drill team members. That was SO not my bag. I was a little bit of a sport-o. Over the course of three years, I played JV volleyball, JV and Varsity basketball, Varsity badminton, and ran Varsity cross country. I did most of this so I could get out of P.E. because I hated getting all sweaty doing whatever it was we had to do and then going back to class icky. Often times I had better conversations with my coaches than some of my teammates. It was difficult being an intellectual among the jocks.

Here I am as a sophomore Varsity center. Just look at that crazy curly hair!!

Junior Varsity vs FVHS, they killed us, but just look at my perfect form!

I liked Depeche Mode, Oingo Boingo, Duran Duran, Tears for Fears, Billy Idol and Paul Young.  I tied an old piece of muslin in my hair Madonna-style and wore my slacks rolled up at the hems with white dance shoes and no socks. MTV was my radio, and after school we literally ran home to watch General Hospital. I recall a group of my sister’s friends coming to our house, because we were the closest to school, and screaming “Ice Princess!!!” at the television during the critical moment Luke and Laura were to defeat the Cassadine’s.

For two years one of my closest friends was Cindy Wilcox, who I recently found on Facebook, and who I am so delighted to be back in contact with! We had so much fun in high school, she made me forget a lot about the awkward parts. Once we went to some school dance that was a toga theme and she wore a bed sheet with yellow flowers on it. Cindy had a way of looking at life in a very positive manner and I took on this optimism too. It’s a lot nicer to believe the best in people than to expect the worst.

I was terrible at math, failing Algebra and Geometry, excelled at English and History (no surprise there!), and of course sports, and considered becoming a teacher because of the example set by my sophomore English teacher, Mrs. Morin. I’ll never forget her coming into class and telling us our next essay was based on an idea that had come to her in the shower that morning: 1984, Should We Hope or Mope?

I went to one reunion, but don’t plan on going to others. The one I went to consisted of the same cliques, the same guy was still completely stoned, the same bully was still pushing around the same gay guy, and the same girls were still oozing out of their tight dresses. I wish them all well and I hope they are happy with their lives. My memories of high school aren’t all wonderful, but they aren’t all terrible either. Time has worn down the sharp edges and once in a while I polish up my rose colored glasses for a walk down memory lane.