Agreed about school. It was a time of great personal problems for me, not exactly made easier by the fact that some of the teachers regarded severe asthma attacks that left me in a coma as just an excuse to avoid class. One even tried to prevent me from taking a few accelerated courses, because he said my unwillingness to perform in gym class meant I was "morally unfit."
I remember around that time the family was taking a car trip somewhere, and we stopped in the local gas station. It had been run for more than a decade by an older Italian and his two sons. (Gas was 25 cents/gallon.) It just being summer, and the owners knowing us, one of the sons asked me a school. I told him I hated it. He told me I'd look back upon it with fondness, someday.
I still find that self-righteous, all-knowing adult wisdom annoying to this day, and I've used it as a lesson. When any teen has asked me if things get better after college and graduation, or if they still stink, I tell 'em that yeah, school really is the worst of it, and that the hard part is not to let the teachers beat the best of your enthusiasm for life and learning out of yourself. And I've gotten a fair share of horrific looks from parents, and at least a couple of grateful grins from teens who had another lifeline to cling to. That's important information to pass along, because it's the truth.
That ends my pontification for this message.
I have kept in very occasional touch with a couple of friends I made in college, but that's been it. School mates are like family: you're thrown together, and you can't choose 'em. I prefer the friends I can choose.
