Looking Back on High School With Fondness?

I don't think anyone looks back on their teenage years and thinks they were level-headed and sensible.

from JoeUser Forums
Following is an excerpt from a chat with my high school friend Valerie:

singrdave: wow, quite the happy homemaker
Valerie: HAHAHAHAHA! sure never realized that i was from the old farm families huh
singrdave: who knew... a girl from Bullhead City grows up to be Mrs. Middle America
Valerie: ha thats what you think lol its really a combo of cheap and picky!
Valerie: of course, what has been the reaction from people you knew to you?
singrdave: I guess they are... dunno I guess. I am a little more traditional than I was in high school. I've calmed down quite a bit.
singrdave: (luckily my childhood was before ritalin...)
Valerie: oh you have no idea how much ive calmed!-- was never ritalin level-- more boarding school!
singrdave: well I enjoyed knowing you in high school
Valerie: you knew me before i was really bad!
Valerie: now i have the parents perspective lol
singrdave: you got WORSE?!?!
singrdave: you were pretty crazy when I knew you, all smokin' and stuff...
Valerie: oh goodness i started smoking about 14yo and i would pay dearly to go smack the teen i was
Valerie: but you couldnt pay me to do it again
Valerie: i had the worst friends lol
singrdave: I liked high school, but wouldn't want to do it again
Valerie: oh i had a blast--i was crazy!
singrdave: so wait, you would go back and have fun, or you wouldn't go back because you were too out of control? I am really not following you
Valerie: oh i had a ball as a teen-- but i would NOT do that again-- not unless i could change ALOT!
Valerie: i had fun but it was stupid!
singrdave: yeah that is how I feel too, exactly. I don't think anyone looks back on their teenage years and thinks they were level-headed and sensible.
Valerie: oh most definitely not-- people who knew me senior year and the year after or so are just flat amazed at me now.
singrdave: yep, I think people would be dumbfounded that I ever amounted to anything.


Any thoughts, enlightened masses? Do we look at our teenage years with longing or loathing?
6,130 views 19 replies
Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top
Loathing, although that's how I looked at most of them while I was there as well.

Positivity would have put me in a much different position, but I've learned you can't second-guess the past or you may regret what you have now. "In the present there are no regrets as there are in the past. ... The time to live is now." Master Han, Zen In The Martial Arts, by Joe Hyams
Reply #2 from JoeUser Forums Top
"I wish I knew then what I know now....when I was younger......"
Start11 - Customize the Start Menu and Taskbar in Windows 10/11.
Reply #3 from JoeUser Forums Top
I hated it. Hated all of it. I was so uncomfortable in my own skin...it sucked.

I think that anyone who says that high school was the best time of their life is very, very sad....
Reply #4 from JoeUser Forums Top
I think the key is knowing now that you knew nothing in high school.

The wisdom and maturity that come from "advanced age" are irreplacable. And hard (impossible) to instill in kids. When people don't learn or change, that is the tragedy.

But, in the immortal words of They Might Be Giants, "I was young and foolish then; I feel old and foolish now."
Reply #5 from JoeUser Forums Top
In all reality, my high school years were fine, but I disliked them intensely.

I very much wish I would have dropped out, earned my GED, then gone to college. I believe those years, spent in that manner, would have been much more pleasant and productive.
Reply #6 from JoeUser Forums Top
Being a teenager and all that came with it was necessary to mold me into the person I am today. Did I like it? I liked parts of it--I liked all the uncertainty of the future and change. Would I go back and do it again: HELL NO!!!!!
Reply #7 from JoeUser Forums Top
I hated highschool and was popular, or feared, I was so uncomfortable all the time never thought I fit, blah blah blah.
Reply #8 from JoeUser Forums Top
I tell you what I think about them when I graduate

~Zoo
Reply #9 from JoeUser Forums Top
You couldn't PAY me to go back.

Some of it I loved, some of it I hated. While I much prefer the person I am now, I also realize that I wouldn't BE me without all of the past experiences, so....... guess I wouldn't do anything differently. Just glad I'm different NOW.
Reply #10 from JoeUser Forums Top
Loathing. I blame boarding school. Surely my attitude had nothing to do with it.

-A.
Reply #11 from JoeUser Forums Top
I think that you will always wish that things were done differently in youth. Personally, I wish I'd thrown caution more to the wind, instead of being so sensible. I didn't start getting crazy until college and my early twenties. Now, I'm starting to feel like I'm growing out of that however, so it looks like sensibility may be back in a few years.

On the note of knowing what I now know and having it to do over, I don't think it would help in the slightest. The fun part is not knowing what will happen. That's what makes life interesting. Sure it would be easy to have the knowledge and experience that far outstrips your contemporaries, but what fun would it be. It's not much of an accomplishment if you already know all the steps to achieve it.

"Wish I didn't know now, what I didn't know then" -Bob Seger
Reply #12 from JoeUser Forums Top
The fun part is not knowing what will happen. That's what makes life interesting.

I like your thoughts there, Demo. It's nice to hear that. I like suspense as much as the next guy. But I would love to go back and kick my younger self in the butt for being such an idiot. And insensitive. And goofy.
Reply #13 from JoeUser Forums Top
I thought high school was great other than when I had to be at home. I don't think it was the highlight of my life. I would hate to think that it was all downhill after 17.

I do wish I had made different and better choices but that would be like wishing my life and my family away and I really can't do that. I guess it's just human nature to wonder what that other life might have been though.
Reply #14 from JoeUser Forums Top
I do wish I had made different and better choices but that would be like wishing my life and my family away and I really can't do that. I guess it's just human nature to wonder what that other life might have been though.


I don't know anybody who doesn't do that. I mean, I know that I look back on my life and wonder if I had gone another way, married a different girl, gone to this school instead of that school... Yeah, where would I be now?

You are certainly not the only person who feels that way. It's human nature to wonder how things would've turned out otherwise.

You're right, though: it's not like I'm wishing my family away. I just wonder what might have been.
Reply #15 from JoeUser Forums Top
"I wish I was 18...again....I'd go places I've never been......"-----Song sung by George Burns

Hard to tell from this, singrdave, but I'd think you kind of liked high school.
I wasn't the most popular kid in High School. I kind of identified with the nerds on "Square Pegs", without the desperation to fit in and be popular.
One of my best friends from back then told me, when we ran into each other again last year, that she always liked the way I didn't care about cliques.
I had friends who were jocks, stoners, choir geeks/band fags, brains and losers (and yes, we actually called them by all those names). I, myself, was both a jock AND a choir geek. Played football and sang tenor.
I had lots of friends, but only a few I really hung out with, and none of us (or them) were in the "in" crowd, if you get me.

I can honestly say that I've never gone to any of my class reunions (the 20th year was last summer); no one there I really have any desire to see.
I still have a lot of the friends I made back then (my best friend and I have known each other for 30 years, actually; since Elementary school. I helped him and his family move a couple months ago, and he helped me haul my washer and dryer a few weeks back), and talk to several of them regularly, whether by e-mail or phone.

I liked HS to an extent, but nothing would make me ever want to go back and relive those days. Except for the music. Gotta luv them 80s tunes.
Reply #16 from JoeUser Forums Top
I liked HS to an extent, but nothing would make me ever want to go back and relive those days. Except for the music. Gotta luv them 80s tunes.


Couldn't agree more!

I had a good time in HS but took it way too seriously. I still have a close relationship with my best friend from the 3rd grade and keep in touch with several of my old classmates (even the ones I didn't hang out with in HS).

I grew up in a very small town and graduated with the same group I went to preschool with. I remember graduation day crying because I wouldn't see those people anymore. It wasn't long until I found out that the true friends remained true friends and all the others really didn't mean anything in the grander scheme of life.
Reply #17 from JoeUser Forums Top
It wasn't long until I found out that the true friends remained true friends and all the others really didn't mean anything in the grander scheme of life.


Truer words never spoken.
Reply #18 from JoeUser Forums Top
I still have a close relationship with my best friend from the 3rd grade and keep in touch with several of my old classmates (even the ones I didn't hang out with in HS).

I am so glad to know that I'm not the only one. I actually liked some people from HS, and I still like them. Like it's so wrong to drop them an email once in a while...

It wasn't long until I found out that the true friends remained true friends and all the others really didn't mean anything in the grander scheme of life.

Yes, that is very deep and ultimately true. I am very glad for the friendships I have maintained through all these years. I hope they never fade.
Reply #19 from JoeUser Forums Top
My HS years were fairly happy ones. I had a lot of outstanding friends, a good home life, was moderately social, didn't get into trouble, skipped class 90% of the time and generally did normal teenager-ish things. I can't look back on those four years and pick out anything particularly aweful. I was a dork, but I was the dork the popular kids didn't pick on. I had my share of angst and know-it-all moments like everyone else. I made some boneheaded decisions and even wrecked a car.

I wouldn't go back and relive any of it, not by a long shot, but I don't look back on it as a horrible experience like a lot of people do. The good part of it all was not having any responsibility. The downside was the lack of freedom I now enjoy.

Now, as an adult, I can go into my kitchen and get the can of whipped cream, spray a bunch of it in my mouth and call that dinner How on EARTH could HS be considered better than that!?

I also find it sad, those who look back at HS as the peak of their lives. You're not even 2 decades into life when you finish it, if that's the high point, then the rest of life must be just a big downhill slide... and I prefer to think the best stuff is still to come