What were you like as a teenager (in high school)?-- a survey

xp dan you have gone back in time?!?!

2. Location/whereabouts?
Family home in a village in Wiltshire (England), school in small town, from 14 switched to a posh fee-paying boarding school in Bristol.

3. What did you listen to?
Early teens, all glam - T. Rex, Slade, Bowie, Mott the Hoople; then classic rock bands like the Stones, Who, Kinks. By the end of school, I was a punk, largely thanks to John Peel I suppose.

4. What were your favorite things to wear?
Jeans. Can't really remember much about shirts - certainly black t-shirts were in there. I have always been a boring dresser.

5. What were your friends like?
14-18 a wide variety, within the posh school - I was very clever, in the school football team, into punk so in with the strange kids, went out with the tough guys at weekends, was the class clown, so got on with everyone. I have retained one of those friends - punk/clever intersection (we were the two to make it to Cambridge).

6. Did you get along with the parents?
Not mine. My mother behaved as if she hated me, and still does. Didn't have much to do with those of my friends.

7. Did you have a job?
Occasionally, in the holidays - postman, plus helping out in my dad's butcher's shop, making sausages and the like.

8. Did you date?
Not much - occasionally, but well under the average (not the average here, in the wider world). I was small and weedy and unhealthy and fatally lacking in confidence.

9. Did you go to prom?
I am English, we knew not of this thing you call 'prom'. I did go to the final school dance, and I think I actually had a very cute blonde date that night too.

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?
I played chess. bridge, football, table tennis, tennis, darts, billiards, squash, badminton, fives and whatever else came my way, when healthy enough. No other clubs, I don't think.

11. What were your favorite school subjects?
I don't think I much liked any of them. English? Maths, for being so easy?

12. What were your non-academic interests?
I found a diary from when I was 15 a while ago. Lots of little reviews of books, records and football matches. Proto-Freaky Trigger, basically. I played a lot of sports, when in good health.

13. What were your favorite movies?
I can't recall any I particularly loved then.

14. Did you enjoy high school??
Not much, no, but I don't think I had much to moan about.

15. Additional comments/ points of interest--
I was threatened with expulsion many times - for taking the piss out of teachers, especially the head, and being disruptive. I knew that my serious Oxbridge prospects gave me a lot of leeway. I was nonetheless the first Oxbridge candidate in the 300 years of the school (estimated to be 2000 such pupils) to whom they did not offer a prefectship. I was proud of that, but made a badge protesting it, to cause more fuss.

16. Favorite books.
SF - that blue Corgi series was a big favourite: City & The Stars, More Than Human. Fell totally for Philip K. Dick somewhere around the age of 16.

Some questions:

1. First of all, what decade is/ was this? (no need for shyness here)
2. Location/whereabouts?
3. What did you listen to?
4. What were your favorite things to wear?
5. What were your friends like?
6. Did you get along with the parents?
7. Did you have a job?
8. Did you date?
9. Did you go to prom?
10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?
11. What were your favorite school subjects?
12. What were your non-academic interests?
13. What were your favorite movies?
14. Did you enjoy high school??
15. Additional comments/ points of interest--

16. Favorite books.

1990s

2. Location/whereabouts?

London

3. What did you listen to?

Radio 4
John Peel
Indie
Drum and Bass
Jazz

4. What were your favorite things to wear?

LOUD Colours

5. What were your friends like?

nerdy, studious

6. Did you get along with the parents?

yes

7. Did you have a job?

no

8. Did you date?

heavens, no

9. Did you go to prom?

say what now?

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?

yes, compulsory for first couple of years, some continued (bookbinding)

11. What were your favorite school subjects?

Sciences, Design

12. What were your non-academic interests?

Climbing/Mountaineering
Cycling
Bookbinding
Camping (same educational charity I still volunteer for)
Record shops
Theatre
Theatre Tech

13. What were your favorite movies?

Embarrassingly, probably the blues brothers.

14. Did you enjoy high school??

mixed experiences, but in general yes

15. Additional comments/ points of interest--

16. Favorite books.

Plays, particularly 50s and 60s US and British (Pinter, Miller, Albee, etc.)

2. Location/whereabouts? Skowhegan, Maine

3. What did you listen to? The Who, the Pet Shop Boys, the Doors, the Beatles, Cindy Lauper, Prince, Wham, Duran Duran, Guns & Roses, Motley Crue, Poison, Billy Joel, Michael Jackson, Charlie Sexton, the Cure, the Cult

4. What were your favorite things to wear? Acid wash jeans, my jersey girl mall hair, blue eyeliner, two pairs of socks at the same time, keds, denim jacket with band pins, my brother's army camoflage jacket

5. What were your friends like? Older than most teenagers, not gothy but dark, sarcastic, silly, already having sex

6. Did you get along with the parents? Yeah, more often than not. I clashed with my stepmom, though.

7. Did you have a job? Nope, wasn;t allowed to

8. Did you date? Yeah, here and there. Usually sensitive boys who appealed to my sense of humor.

9. Did you go to prom? Junior and Senior

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that? I was a cheerleader, on the yearbook and newspaper staffs

11. What were your favorite school subjects? German, English and World History

12. What were your non-academic interests? I played field hockey, rode horses with my best friend, read a LOT

13. What were your favorite movies? Ferris Bueller, Sixteen Candles, A Guy Named Joe, the Maltease Falcon, Good Morning Vietnam, 2001

14. Did you enjoy high school?? Yeah, I really did

15. Additional comments/ points of interest-- None that immediately spring to mind

16. Favorite books - A Rumor of War, Virgins, Tom Sawyer, Erica Jong's 'Fanny', VC Andrews, Stephen King

2. Location/whereabouts?

Southern California

3. What did you listen to?

Devo, X, Dead Kennedys, B-52s, Clash, Ramones, Sex Pistols, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Damned, The Jam, Buzzcocks, Joy Division, other stuff

4. What were your favorite things to wear?

jeans and a shirt, buttons on a blazer

5. What were your friends like?

Theatre geeks and musicians who smoked pot and wanted to be in bands

6. Did you get along with the parents?
No

7. Did you have a job?
Yes

8. Did you date?
Yes, steadily

9. Did you go to prom?

No but I went to all the other dances. I didn't like the guy who asked me to prom and the guy I liked (my future husband) had already graduated and hated the idea of prom so I stayed home.

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?

Concert Choir, Drama

11. What were your favorite school subjects?

Drama

12. What were your non-academic interests?

Music, political theory

13. What were your favorite movies?
Clockwork Orange, Harold and Maude, Apocolypse Now, The Kids Are All Right, Rocky Horror, Star Wars

14. Did you enjoy high school??

Yes
15. Additional comments/ points of interest-

I went to see the Clash at the Hollywood Palladium instead of going to my high school graduation. I spent every weekend since 1980 going to punki shows in Hollywood. By the time I left high school, I was in a post-punk band.

Books: Fahrenheit 451; Brave New World; Lord of the Rings trilogy; 1984; Dune; Foundation Trilogy; Songmaster; Astronomy books, physics books, religion books, mysticism books.

1983-87

2. Location/whereabouts?

Suburban upstate New York

3. What did you listen to?

Ramones/Replacements/JAMC/Prince/Pogues/Husker Du/R.E.M./Heaven 17/Cure/etc. I was a total mid-'80s college-radio kid.

4. What were your favorite things to wear?

I don't remember having "favorite" things. Any combination of jeans and T-shirts that would make me not in any way stand out. Not standing out was important.

5. What were your friends like?

Well-adjusted brainy kids, mostly. National Honor Society soccer-team types, with a couple of freaky outliers. I was a geek with mostly unrealized aspirations to freakdom. My idea of subversiveness was smoking pot on a band trip.

6. Did you get along with the parents?

Sure, I guess. I remember fights, but nothing earth-shattering. We fought most of the way through middle school, by high school things had kind of calmed down.

7. Did you have a job?

In the summers, at a restaurant and then at a country club. Washing dishes, busing tables. I liked being around adults who said "Fuck" so much.

8. Did you date?

Not until senior year. Even that was pretty tame and friendly. I didn't have a serious girlfriend until college.

9. Did you go to prom?

Yeah, but only because a female friend insisted that she was going to go the prom and I was going to take her. It was wack.

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?

A little. I liked Model U.N., because you got to take days off from school and go hang out on college campuses and argue with people. I've always liked arguing. And I was in the band percussion section in 9th-11th grade. Played in the pit orchestra for one school musical; then worked stage crew the next year, after figuring out that all the fun was backstage.

11. What were your favorite school subjects?

English, History...the humanities in general. Past a point math and science bored me. I declined to take calculus my senior year, which infuriated my math teacher. He told me I'd regret it. I never have.

12. What were your non-academic interests?

Played drums in the school's only functioning rock band, but we weren't good enough for it to score me many cool points. (We had a Spinal Tap-esque procession of lead singers.) Started an underground newspaper with some friends junior year, published it throughout senior year. It got me hauled down to the principal's office a few times, and thrown against a locker once, so that was exciting. Played baseball in the summers until I hit the Little League age limit at 16, took up tennis after that.

13. What were your favorite movies?

Blue Velvet. Sid and Nancy. Diner. Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

14. Did you enjoy high school??

Yeah. It started out kinda so-so, but got better as it went. Junior and senior years were a lot of fun.

15. Additional comments/ points of interest

There's one girl in particular who I really should have kissed. I didn't figure out until years later that she wanted me to, by which point it was too late. That's OK, I guess. Gives a romantic cast in retrospect to the experience that it was lacking at the time.

2. Location/whereabouts?

My hometown. it was a 15 minute walk to school.

3. What did you listen to?

I didn't listen to much music. I did freak out over Ice T, Neneh Cherry, George Michael and Madonna. I also listened to lots of Northern Soul because my dad played that.

4. What were your favorite things to wear?

During high school? We had a uniform.

5. What were your friends like?

Some were total geeks, some very cool,...

6. Did you get along with the parents?

Yes, very much so.

7. Did you have a job?

During high school? haha No. I was lazy.

8. Did you date?

Nope.

9. Did you go to prom?

When I was 17 yr - the yr before I graduated - I did but the very last year I didn't. Didn't feel like it. I did attend the spring party ("last 100 days of high school").

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?

No, we didn't have that. If there were clubs, I probably wouldn't have been in any of'em. I repeat, I was lazy. :-)

11. What were your favorite school subjects?

Religion (if you can believe that), History, English (duh!) and all other languages we had. Uh, French, Dutch and German.

12. What were your non-academic interests?

Tennis (last three yrs of HS), reading, movies, television...

13. What were your favorite movies?

Fuck if I remember any of'em. I do remember watching lots of porn around the age of 15. I would stay up until it was 12 and watch the movie channel.

14. Did you enjoy high school??

First year of HS was pure hell: snobby school full of over-achievers. Changed school after first year. It was okay. I had fun, but it's not like I get all teary eyed and miss it.

15. Additional comments/ points of interest--

No. Oh yeah, I impersonated my Religion teacher - a bitchy nun - for a play. I pretended to be her and strip. She wasn't in the audience thank *god*.

2. Location/whereabouts?
south london, UK

3. What did you listen to?
only prince, then only hendrix/zeppelin/wonder, then GRUNGE then a bit of metal then LOTS of hip-hop, and then EVERYTHING ALL AT ONCE

4. What were your favorite things to wear?
jeans, converse, band tee, checked shirt. same as now, really.

5. What were your friends like?
close friends=great. larger circle of not so great friends too. we all thought we were outcasts and outlaws, but we weren't really.

6. Did you get along with the parents?
yes. some friction with dad, but i was his carer, so it was to be expected.

7. Did you have a job?
yes. at a film supplies shop, then a shoe shop, then WH Smith's.

8. Did you date?
yes! but did not get 'any' in my teens. (damn catholics)

9. Did you go to prom?
prom-esque leaver's ball was the first social occasion this Terribly Shy Boy attended. i felt like dianne court in Say Anything.

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?
no, but i help organise gigs in the Crypt of our school, and designed posters for events etc etc

11. What were your favorite school subjects?
english, art, art history

12. What were your non-academic interests?
music, movies, books, gurls.

13. What were your favorite movies?
woody allen movies, scorcese movies. foreign things.

14. Did you enjoy high school??
hmmm. the work, yes. the social environment, mostly no.

15. Additional comments/ points of interest--
i got suspended! for totally unjust reasons! which made me see that the world sucks and the rules don't really matter and they *will fuck you up, if you let 'em. so don't.

2. Location/whereabouts?
3. What did you listen to?
4. What were your favorite things to wear?
5. What were your friends like?
6. Did you get along with the parents?
7. Did you have a job?
8. Did you date?
9. Did you go to prom?
10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?
11. What were your favorite school subjects?
12. What were your non-academic interests?
13. What were your favorite movies?
14. Did you enjoy high school??
15. Additional comments/ points of interest--

2. Location/whereabouts?
Uddingston Grammar School, near Glasgow.

3. What did you listen to?
Music class: "Marcello, every week you bring in something that is the strangest and most bizarre piece of music I've ever heard." "Miss, can you tell him to bring in some normal music one week?"

4. What were your favourite things to wear?
N/A - you wore school uniform and that was it.

5. What were your friends like?
Friendly. I'm still in touch with quite a lot of them.

6. Did you get along with the parents?
Hardly ever saw them.

7. Did you have a job?
Saturday/holiday job behind the counter at the now defunct Grant's Educational bookshop, next to Glasgow Central station in Union Street.

8. Did you date?
Nope. Had a stupid and unrequited crush throughout entirety of school career, and in any case tended to fancy teachers rather than fellow pupils.

9. Did you go to prom?
No such thing in Scotland. We did have periodic school discos though. DJ to me while playing "Jilted John": "Are you Elvis Costello?" I was dancing with two girls at the time! Never had a last-dance smooch, though.

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like
that?
Drama Society and Debating Society but no sports. We had annual end-of-term House Shows (mine was Calder House; surname initials A-C) but I always got out of them by doing a play instead.

11. What were your favorite school subjects?
English, French, Latin, History, Music.

12. What were your non-academic interests?
More or less the same as they are now - music, art, literature. I was big on sci-fi and Marvel Comics, and that has changed since.

13. What were your favourite movies?
At the time - Citizen Kane, Psycho, The Trial, Blazing Saddles. I didn't get to see any of the '70s new wave classics (Godfather, Taxi Driver, Chinatown etc.) until the '80s 'cos they were all X certificate.

14. Did you enjoy high school??
Yes - as a release from unhappy home life.

2. Location/whereabouts? - Grafton, Massachusetts

3. What did you listen to? - Lemonheads, Janes Addiction, Spin Doctors, Soul Asylum, Smiths, Kitchens Of Distinction, Smashing Pumpkins, Neds, Ride, MBV, Cure, Toad The Wet Sprocket, Helmet, Violent Femmes, Ministry, Big Daddy Kane, NWA, PE, Three Times Dope...

4. What were your favorite things to wear? - Jeans, Chuck T's, Sweaters

5. What were your friends like? - Smart, Stoners

6. Did you get along with the parents? - In the early years of high school, but then they got divorced and no.

7. Did you have a job? - Multiple, I kept quitting.

8. Did you date? - Not until I was a junior

9. Did you go to prom? - 4 of them

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that? - I played Ice Hockey and Baseball

11. What were your favorite school subjects? - study hall and cooking

12. What were your non-academic interests? - pot, beer, girls

13. What were your favorite movies? - hell if i remember

14. Did you enjoy high school?? - at times

15. Additional comments/ points of interest-- n/a

16. books - ha...right.

16. Favourite books
Asimov's Nightfall And Other Stories, Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man, Ballard's Crash, The Goon Show Scripts Vols 1-3, Livy's Early History Of Rome, The Citizen Kane Book (Kael's Raising Kane essay + full screenplay), Beckett's Malone trilogy.

2. Middlesex suburbs

3. Pop rave, ardkore-jungle-thereafter, house, techno, acid jazz, hip-hop, US heavy rock/metal and grunge, British indie and pop rock

4. Terrible, badly co-ordinated clothes, apparently (jeans, sports brand tops, whatever was in but in a very casual way)

5. Immature, funny, annoying, unweird, unconfident, hygienic, lewd, gregarious, dim, sheep-like, unambitious,

6. Yes, tho Dad was v difficult to communicate with (as was I at that point tho)

7. Paperboy then supermarket shelf-stacker

8. No

9. No

10. No

11. Art, English, CDT

12. Music, video games, music, TV, music, comics, music

13. stupid Hollywood action movies like Die Hard, Predator and Terminator 2

14. Hardly ever

Stevie, should have opted for just playing some Merzbow instead of all your records at once. How many stereos did you have?!? ;-)

NOT ENOUGH!!!!!!!!!!

90s

2. Location/whereabouts?

Cambridge (England)

3. What did you listen to?

in chronological order: indie/britpop, 'techno', trip hop/ big beat, 80s hip-hop, 60s psychedelia.

4. What were your favorite things to wear?

*favourite* things skate-derived, but didn't all the time.

5. What were your friends like?

'slackers', up to a point.

6. Did you get along with the parents?

yeah.

7. Did you have a job?

sometimes; i had two paper rounds throughout.

8. Did you date?

nope.

9. Did you go to prom?

(this is england, so it wasn't high school, and we didn't exactly have proms, but) yes.

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?

not really.

11. What were your favorite school subjects?

history, philosophy (er the latter at sixth form only (16-18yrs old, does this count?)

12. What were your non-academic interests?

music

13. What were your favorite movies?

goodfellas, apocalypse now

14. Did you enjoy high school??

the later parts, yeah

15. Additional comments/ points of interest

no.

16. Favorite books.

'catch 22'. 'revolution in the head'.

1st half of the 90s

2. Location/whereabouts?

Los Angeles

3. What did you listen to?

The Cure, Siouxsie, Sisters of Mercy, Joy Division, Dead Can dance and a lot of goth-industrial stuff

4. What were your favorite things to wear?

School uniform by day, black gothy things on evenings and week-ends

5. What were your friends like?

Pretty eclectic when I think back, although all had some affinity to gothy stuff - I liked being group leader so I guess I tended to surround myself with slightly impressionable people.

6. Did you get along with the parents?

More or less

7. Did you have a job?

Nope

8. Did you date?

Nope

9. Did you go to prom?

Nope, but I did go to after-proms

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?

Nope

11. What were your favorite school subjects?

French Lit., History

12. What were your non-academic interests?

MUSIC! a lot of other things usually as an easily bored dilettante, learning exotic languages, geeky computer stuff, tennis

13. What were your favorite movies?

Wings of Desire, Strangers in Paradise, The Tenant, Diabolo Menthe, Le Souffle au Coeur

13bis. Fave books

Milan Kundera, Peter Handke, Kafka and most 19th century French classics (which I usually had to read for school)

14. Did you enjoy high school??

Not at the time, but looking back I'd say that I had a good time and was surrounded by great people. The fact that I am still very close friends nearly all of my teenage friends is proof of that.

15. Additional comments/ points of interest--

Like most people I guess, I always feel that I really didn't make the most of it. A lot of my time was spent bitching about where I was (the US, L.A), longing instead for a romanticized Europe, and struggling to combine my competing aspirations, of being a scenester and of being different. I miss that time of my life.

2. Location/whereabouts?
North of England

3. What did you listen to?
Iron Maiden, Metallica, gradually moving to dance music

4. What were your favorite things to wear?
Had absolutely no desire for fashion, just jeans I spose.

5. What were your friends like?
one was computer geek, the other an artist

6. Did you get along with the parents?
mine or my friends? yes to both really

7. Did you have a job?
No way

8. Did you date?
Nope

9. Did you go to prom?
No

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?
No

11. What were your favorite school subjects?
Art, design, computer studies, typing. anything i was good at.

12. What were your non-academic interests?
computer games, comics, graffiti.

13. What were your favorite movies?
horror ones i think, i remember liking Alien a lot and Jaws

14. Did you enjoy high school??
No hated it, teachers were all horrible and wrong.

15. Comments - i went through rapid phases as a teenager, i could be into skateboarding intensly for one month and then just forget about it the next. i developed late as well, my teenage tantrums didn't start until i was about 18. I'm still doing a lot of what i did back then, although with a better frame of mind (maybe)

16. Favourite books - lord of the rings and graphic novels like arkham asylum, stuff a bit wierd and dark.

2. Location/whereabouts? Edinburgh

3. What did you listen to? stuff like u2 and echo and the bunnymen. laterly tfc, ride & my bloody valentine

4. What were your favorite things to wear? Big boots, short skirts, thick wooly tights and badly hennaed hair

5. What were your friends like? much more varied than now

6. Did you get along with the parents? pretty well
7. Did you have a job? various saturday jobs in hairdressers

8. Did you date? not at school, i was only interested in older boys at that time

9. Did you go to prom? nah, i left after taking my highers in 5th year

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that? i was in the music and fencing clubs.

11. What were your favorite school subjects? chemistry, german, music

12. What were your non-academic interests? fencing, music and shopping

13. What were your favorite movies? i distinctly remember a big
crowd of us watching blue velvet when i was about 14 or 15.

14. Did you enjoy high school?? It was ok

2. Location/whereabouts?
Albany, NY

3. What did you listen to?
Early - synthpop, Duran Duran
Later - 80s hardcore and college radio "alternative" as we called it then

4. What were your favorite things to wear?
Jeans, oxford cloth shirts and my brother's flannel shirts. Anything tartan.

5. What were your friends like?
Weird, geeky Dr. Who nerds

6. Did you get along with the parents?
No.

7. Did you have a job?
No.

8. Did you date?
God no.

9. Did you go to prom?
Yes, in drag, in a tuxedo, with the stubble of my shaved head dyed fuschia. I got onstage with the band and jammed with them to Ramones covers. No, I'm not making this up. My mum has photos.

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?
Philosophy club. School newspaper.

11. What were your favorite school subjects?
Mathematics, Latin and art.

12. What were your non-academic interests?
I didn't really have many. Imaginary anguages and fantasy/sci fi

13. What were your favorite movies?
Repo Man, Sid & Nancy, Mad Max (the original)

14. Did you enjoy high school??
God, no.

15. Additional comments/ points of interest--
I went through high school a year younger than my class. I was suspended half a dozen times, until finally I got mono, and having spent several months in hospital and missed most of my senior year, I was allowed to take the GED and get the f*ck out of there.

16. Favorite books.
Suetonius - the 12 Caesars. LOTR. Brideshead Revisted. Anything by John Irving.

2. Location/whereabouts?
Northern England

3. What did you listen to?
Nothing, until I was about 14 or so. After that, indie-ish pop.

4. What were your favorite things to wear?
Fairly preppy stuff, but usually with jeans. I still have the ragged and very stained pair of jeans that I wore for photography class.

5. What were your friends like?
Geeky

6. Did you get along with the parents?
Not particularly

7. Did you have a job?
No

8. Did you date?
Ahahaha. No.

9. Did you go to prom?
Prom? What's a prom?

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?
I played in a couple of school orchestras. Apart from that, I don't think we *had* any clubs.

11. What were your favorite school subjects?
Maths, Chemistry, Photography

12. What were your non-academic interests?
Playing clarinet and piano (mostly classical stuff)

13. What were your favorite movies?
I really have no idea.

14. Did you enjoy high school??
No.

16. Favourite books?
One I remember because it's still a favourite today: Zeno Was Here by Jan Mark.

xpost:

No, I'm not making this up. My mum has photos.

Go on Kate, you *have* to post them!

x-post - no, I can't post them as I don't have them. My mum was not at the prom, my classmates took the photos and gave them to me. I was disgusted with them, but my mum thought they were sweet and kept them.

oh yes, i forgot - i was in the school orchestra. clarinet.

Yeah, lots of people at my high school dated. And made out behind the playing fields and got shouted at by nuns for being shameless hussies.

Never happened to me, tho. :-(

I had sort of strange, unrequited but rather vocal crushes on various boys involved with things like the school newspaper. Of course they found me completely icky and were horrified by the whole thing. Sigh.

(depending on what school you went to, obv)

2. Location/whereabouts?
home: brooklyn. school: manhattan.

3. What did you listen to?
a balanced mix of obscuro punk/indie and crap on the radio.

4. What were your favorite things to wear?
same stuff i wear now. but more baggy and boyish, because i didn't expect anyone to ever notice that i was a girl. i used to wear my dad's air force jacket (with his/my last name on it). and i had a prized pair of dark green suede doc martens.

5. What were your friends like?
mostly nerdy art weirdos. one of them was in my dream the night before this one.

6. Did you get along with the parents?
sometimes. we fought but it could have been much worse.

7. Did you have a job?
i babysat.

8. Did you date?
i didn't "date," no.

9. Did you go to prom?
nah.

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?
yearbook, literary magazine, square shit like that.

11. What were your favorite school subjects?
music. i went to a performing arts school and that's what i studied.

12. What were your non-academic interests?
cutting class.

13. What were your favorite movies?
the faces of death series, the paul morrissey warhol movies, and over the edge. plus whatever outre cult flicks we could find at the kim's video near my friend's place. we were able to rent porn there at age 15, without any of the staff batting an eyelash!

14. Did you enjoy high school??
i fucking hated it, but aside from the "having to go to classes and follow stupid rules" part, i had a lot of friends and there wasn't really a social hierarchy (no jocks or cheerleaders, just freaks of different kinds), so it wasn't as nightmarish as some people's high school experience. junior high was way worse for me.

2. Location/whereabouts?
Heywood, nr Rochdale nr Manchester

3. What did you listen to?
The radio. If there were any bands I really liked then, it was James and INXS

4. What were your favorite things to wear?
Doc Martens and All-Stars. Jeans and t-shirts. Au naturellment.

5. What were your friends like?
Swots and other awkward boys who liked computers ands felt no shame in doing extra work in lunchtime.

6. Did you get along with the parents?
Yes. Always have.

7. Did you have a job?
Packing toilet rolls for Marks and Spencers. Swiftly followed by car-wash attendant and ice-cream man.

8. Did you date?
Nope. Turned someone down in 1988 out of fear, which was a mistake. Didn't get a look-in until 1990, where there were three instances in a space of 4 months, before returning to the usual absence for the next two years.

9. Did you go to prom?
We had a school-leaving dinner, which I saw from the local paper has now been rebranded a prom. It had non-alcoholic wine. The leaving ball for 6th Form had booze, and so did I. My abiding memory is being told to 'watch it' by a policeman when walking down the main drag whistling 'The Red Flag'.

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?
My comprehensive didn't have clubs. I played football in breaktime and when it rained, did extra technical drawing whilst listening to tapes of the Mary Whitehouse Experience. I used to work in the school break sweet shop, which shows what a swot I was to be trusted with the huge amount of coppers I cam into contact with.

11. What were your favorite school subjects?
History. Then Politics at A-level.

12. What were your non-academic interests?
Football. Trying to carefully balance getting drunk without my parents noticing. Ringing in Piccadilly Radio to try and convince James Stannage to let you tell two jokes on the run (he cut you off if your first attempt was rubbish). Later on, it was trying to win prizes on the Spence McDonald show.

13. What were your favorite movies?
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
A Very British Coup

14. Did you enjoy high school??
On balance, yeah. I wasn't always happy, but it'd be myth-making to say I didn't enjoy my school days.

15. Additional comments/ points of interest--
You've had quite enough from em already.

2. northern 'burbs of melbourne, victoria, australia

3. rough trajectory: chart pop > grunge > britpop once I turned into a tryhard anglophile > started to dabble in dance music and hip-hop a bit by the end of year 12.

4. strictly school uniform up to year 12. (i got away with various twists such as long floppy business shirts.) then we could wear what we liked, as long as it was black, white, grey or red (school colours, donchaknow). outside of school, jeans & t-shirt as a matter of course.

5. had a clique of sorta nerdish friends who I was close to. ended up getting along with most social groups, which was the polar opposite of my year 7 loner tendencies.

6. sorta kinda. my sister fought much more with my parents.

7. for a short time, as a video store clerk.

8. no. a few huuuuuge crushes that I was too shy to act on, alas.

9. yes, twice.

10. did a few things - got voted onto school council once (but they never sat), got roped into a debating team, was in a philosophy class for "gifted" students.

11. english, literature, media studies.

12. videogames and music, pretty much.

13. goodfellas, trainspotting, aliens.

14. yes, best time of my life. only recently could I say that I've lived up to any of the potential that I showed back then.

15. started out a dilligent student and went backwards from there. never seemed to harm my grades though, I got awards for four of five subjects at VCE level. my lax study habits probably stuffed me at uni though (I dropped out in first year).

16. hitchhiker's guide, trainspotting, anarchist's cookbook (never made anything from it though of course).

13-14: Robert Westall - he revolutionised teenage literature in the UK by adding swearing and sex. Great stuff. He'd do horror and fantasy but his best stuff was the war time stories like The Machine Gunners.
For a while I was really into the Sharpe novels. All that derring do and sex.
Hitchhikers Guide.
Then by standard grade I started to grow up a bit, although I was mostly reading Select and NME.
15-17: Trainspotting, On The Road, Great Gatsby, 100 Years Of Solitude, Love In The Time Of Cholera (I did my CSYS dissertation on Marquez, show off that I was), THomas Hardy.

Also the school magazine, for which I wrote reviews of Pearl Jam's Vitalogy and Nirvana Unplugged where I'm sure the phrase "roller coaster ride" was deployed (oh dear). I also wrote parody of Act 2, Scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet starring the characters from My So Called Life which I thought terribly clever at the time.

Joined Youth Theatre when I was 16, which was where all the freaks hung out, some self-consciously so. Had some great parties through that and it helped us get rid of this homophobic asshole who had been our "friend" (read: guy who was tall enough to get served in the off license).

2. Location/whereabouts?
MANCHESTER

3. What did you listen to?
FUCKIN' BOLT THROWER AND ULTRAVIOLENCE

4. What were your favorite things to wear?
STEEL TOE CAP DOC MARTENS

5. What were your friends like?
A LOAD OF NINNIES

6. Did you get along with the parents?
AS LONG AS THEY DIDNT TELL ME WHAT TO DO.

7. Did you have a job?
YEP. PULLING NAILS OUT OF BITS OF WOOD WITH A CLAWHAMMER

8. Did you date?
ONCE.

9. Did you go to prom?
I NEVER WENT TO SCHOOL IN AMERICA YOU SILLY SAUSAGE

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?
BOXING.

11. What were your favorite school subjects?
FRENCH.

12. What were your non-academic interests?
WRESTLING. BOLT THROWER. SEGA. FRY UP.

13. What were your favorite movies?
SUBURBAN COMMANDO. UNIVERSAL SOLDIER. THAT ONE WHERE THE KIDS STEAL A PIRATE SHIP

14. Did you enjoy high school??
YEH IM BEING SARCASTIC!

15. Additional comments/ points of interest--
HI EVERYONE I'M SYE AND I'M NEW ON THIS BOARD. HELLO YA MELONS!!!!

This is what we always told ourselves in the percussion section. We weren't band geeks, we were drummers. Even when we were playing triangle.

Reading this whole thread sort of makes me wish I'd gone to ILX High.

otoh, about half to 3/4 of your average high school population is made up of geeks and nerds of one kind or another, and it's not hard to believe they (we) are disproportionately represented on ILX.

i knew one cheerleader who was really nice. i remember her dad was a helicopter pilot for the army and circa first gulf war we were worried about him. for reasons i don't quite understand, all the cheerleaders in my h.s. were black.

nearly every other high school we played had an all-black cheerleading squad. ours was largely white, but so's my town. like, overwhelmingly so.

plainfield's marching band did this ridiculously great rendition of "bad boys for life" for their half-time show in the guise of an intra-band "war" ("EAST SIDE, SHOW 'EM WHAT YOU GOT! NOW THE WEST SIDE!" - back and forth like this, both halves of the band blasting at each other). we played a chuck mangione trilogy.

16. Where/what, back then, did you think you'd be by now?
17. What would you now tell your teenage self?

Baaderonixx, we have a Q16 already.

At my school if you weren't a band geek, cheerleader or football player then you were probably a gangbanger or drug dealer. Not a whole lot of choice there.

2. Location/whereabouts?
'93-'95: New Delhi, India
'95-'97: College Park, Maryland

3. What did you listen to?
In early high school, "alternative" music and gangsta rap. Once I moved back to the US I started getting more into indie, buying basically everything that came out on Matador or Up!

4. What were your favorite things to wear?
Oversized band t-shirts (Alice in Chains, Faith No More, etc.).

5. What were your friends like?
My friends in India were a weird mix of dip and army brats from various countries, most of whom were really smart but did a lot of stupid things, mostly involving alcohol and drugs (which were pretty easy to come across in India). I had a lot of trouble making friends once we moved, mostly because I went to a really horrible public high school for stupid and dangerous kids. Eventually I became friendly with some of the kids from my AP classes, who were the ones who were actually making an effort, but I wouldn't consider them "friends." I was also in a band with two guys who had also lived in India and moved back to the DC area.

6. Did you get along with the parents?
I went through a brief rebellion phase but generally I got along with my parents really well.

7. Did you have a job?
I had a summer job in India the last year before I moved back, working in an office. It sucked. I would go hide in the bathroom stall for as long as I thought I could get away with it.

8. Did you date?
Not really. I was an awkward and not particularly attractive teen. I had a girlfriend for a few months in junior year of high school but she was crazy and I cringe thinking about it now.

9. Did you go to prom?
I went to prom as a freshman and sophomore because my high school was so small that all high schoolers were invited to prom. Both years I took girls that I was "friends" with but of course I had massive crushes on both of them. I also went to my senior prom, by myself, was miserable, and left after about an hour.

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?
I was in "It's Academic" (quiz show) and the forensics team.

11. What were your favorite school subjects?
Math classes, art classes.

12. What were your non-academic interests?
Music (I was in bands and started doing home 4-track recording on my own, and spent most of my allowance on used CDs).

13. What were your favorite movies?
Barton Fink, Dazed and Confused.

14. Did you enjoy high school??
I spent the first two years of high school having fun but convincing myself I was miserable. Then I moved and I really was miserable.

haha, dead, of course
get some

1989 through 1992.

2. Location/whereabouts?

'89-'91: Goose Bay, Labrador
'91-'92: St. John's, Newfoundland

3. What did you listen to?

As I said on another recent thread, it was a three-way tie between UK new wave / synthpop (Depeche Mode, New Order, The Cure), early-90s dance stuff (Black Box, Deee-lite, KLF, and what little real club music I could get my hands on), and hip-hop. This was Hair Metal Central and I guess I thought I was rebelling, but I genuinely loved what I was listening to, and I still enjoy a great deal of it.

4. What were your favorite things to wear?

I was a bit of a disaster, fashion-wise, because I wanted to do my own thing but I desperately wanted to fit in at the same time. I was an uneasy mish-mash: think late-80s American preppie with tacked-on elements of new wave & hip-hop. (There's a terrible Daisy Age peace medallion that I'm thankful I was never photographed wearing, and I remember rocking an utterly bizarre mullet at one point.)

5. What were your friends like?

I was never super popular but I always had a handful of close friends. We were a relatively quiet, academic bunch. I wouldn't call us nerds, exactly, since we were too sociable for that title, but we kept out of trouble for the most part.

6. Did you get along with the parents?

For the most part, yes, though I do remember clashing with them over grades & whatnot. My mother in particular was NOT ready for a teenager. There's more to this story but I'll save it for another thread.

7. Did you have a job?

Odd jobs here & there. I babysat my parents' friends' kids a lot, worked weekends at a corner store, and flyered for a high school dance DJ. I also got a small allowance for doing chores around the house, so I always had some pocket money.

8. Did you date?

Yes, I had three different girlfriends in as many years, one of whom I've written about elsewhere.

9. Did you go to prom?

I had two in one year! One in Goose Bay and the other in St. John's. I had dates for both of them, too. I liked the idea of having something to dress up for. (I clean up pretty good.)

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?

Choir, jazz band, and drama. I actually had the lead in the school musical one year.

11. What were your favorite school subjects?

English, history, social studies, and geography. I hated math in all its forms, but managed to pull off decent grades in it. They kept sticking me in advanced math classes until I insisted that I was in over my head.

12. What were your non-academic interests?

Music, books, and riding my bike. (My hometown has a paved bike trail from one end to the other). By high school I was writing fairly elaborately arranged synth tunes over which I would sing (and rap - eep!). I also wrote the usual godawful teen poetry and short stories.

13. What were your favorite movies?

Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Breakfast Club, Rebel Without A Cause, The original Star Wars trilogy

14. Did you enjoy high school??

Yes and no. I think I tried too hard to fit in during my first year and I got royally teased for it. Then I chilled the fuck out and stopped caring so much. That's when people started to befriend me. When we moved to St. John's I went to my new high school with a "what the fuck, I'm only here for a year" attitude, and aside from one weird incident that I'll save for another thread, I got along really well there. It's odd - I had zero self confidence for most of my childhood, only to have a switch flip in my head at age sixteen.

15. Additional comments/ points of interest--

* I was always an urban dweller at heart - I knew that I wasn't going to make my life in Newfoundland or Labrador, and I think that's why I assimilated into Toronto life as quickly as I did.
* I would periodically mail-order some twelve-inch singles from a DJ shop to get my house music fix.
* I wish someone would have told me not to bother with cassette singles. Those things did not age well, and I probably bought fifty of the fuckers, all of which are now in various stages of unplayability.
* A lot of my musical aspirations came true - the things that I daydreamed about in high school are things I now get paid to do.

In middle school, I was told that another class answered my name in unison when a teacher asked them "Define 'nerd'".

This makes me sad. You are the awesome.

88-92. so, 80s and 90s

2. Location/whereabouts?

Seattle washington, baby

3. What did you listen to?

nothing but classics, at first: cure, new order, REM. second half of high school i hit up Nirvana and the locals.

4. What were your favorite things to wear?

flannels and cutoffs and long underwear. serious. 1991 in Seattle.

5. What were your friends like?

outcasts and inidviduals? some of both. Future activists and rockstars and grad students. i was going to say 'all white' but i did have one filipino friend.

6. Did you get along with the parents?

generally, yes, until they found out about the drugs. then we hit some rough patches.

7. Did you have a job?

yes: grocery store, movie theater, record store.

8. Did you date?

totally. 10th grade: jennifer gruw3ll, 11th: nicole stanl3y, 12th: h3ather wirth

9. Did you go to prom?

twice. believe it.

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?

i think i showed for environmental club like once or twice.

11. What were your favorite school subjects?

n/a

12. What were your non-academic interests?

taking LSD and listening to music. going downtown on the bus.

13. What were your favorite movies?

my friends and i watched the same movies over and over: Spinal Tap, Heathers, and Gas Food Lodging

14. Did you enjoy high school??

i enjoyed the people i was around and the friends i made. school? not so much.

15. Additional comments/ points of interest--

nope

What would you now tell your teenage self?
GO TO PROM, EVEN IF YOU HAVE TO GO STAG. You never know how much fun you'll have there, even if it's just the fun you derive doing the dress-up bit. Stop taking yourself so damn seriously and try to act your age at least once or twice in your life. Don't be afraid to be wholly yourself and if others don't like that person, fuck them. Have a social life. Before you know it, you'll be in your mid 20s and rueing your lost youth. And learn to play synths -- you adore Nick Rhodes, David Sylvian, Vince Clarke, and synthpop in general, so why not emulate your idols?

1987-1993.

2. Location/whereabouts?

blackpool, lancashire, UK.

3. What did you listen to?

joy division. new order. the human league, OMD, and a whole heap of other synthpop. i was roughly a decade out of time. then, in 1991, i discovered the NME and indie and got myself a madchester-style curtain-style haircut. it was a glorious new dawn.

4. What were your favorite things to wear?

when i was 13 i wore a trenchcoat and trilby hat. i really was an insufferable little prick. by 16 i'd settled into black jeans, black T-shirts ... and far too many black polo-necks.

5. What were your friends like?

two or three absolute diamonds, with whom i'm still in touch; indeed, in an incestuous twist of fate, my best friend from back home is now my brother-in-law. but everyone else i hung about with was a complete knob, to be honest. this was a crappy little private school full of spoiled, lazy dickheads, plus a smattering of smug arseholes, rugby lads and general wasters.

6. Did you get along with the parents?

yes. the reason i never really went off the rails - why i always stopped whatever i was up to before i got in real trouble - was because i loved and respected them and didn't want to upset them. i didn't give a flying fuck what teachers etc thought, but i couldn't bear the thought of disappointing my parents.

7. Did you have a job?

no. (what was that i was saying about spoiled kids?) but when i was 16 i started hanging around a new radio station that had opened, and convinced them to let me read the news on saturday mornings. it was fun for a while.

8. Did you date?

hahahahah. no. i was too busy being insufferable/up my own arse/playing computer games. by the time i hit 16 i began to sort myself out, but it was too late: the damage had been done.

9. Did you go to prom?

my synth-pop duo played the upper-sixth-form dance. two terrified, droning 17-year-olds singing dirges about the gulf war and why we hated everyone to an audience of rugby lads and hockey girls. and doing songs in waltz time so nobody could dance, even if they'd wanted to. wonderful. probably my proudest moment.

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?

i was in the school general-knowledge quiz team. i did this to impress a girl. this tells you a lot about how little i understood the opposite sex. i used to go to a computer-club thing on a thursday night too, although at least i was under no illusions that i'd pull there. in sixth-form i set up an underground school newspaper, which remains the pinnacle of my journalistic career.

11. What were your favorite school subjects?

english, languages, humanities. i hated maths, science and games.

12. What were your non-academic interests?

computers and computer games. there was a brief, tragic and socially damaging flirtation with role-playing. by 16, music had taken over my life.

13. What were your favorite movies?

ghostbusters, the blues brothers, when the wind blows. i didn't watch that many films.

14. Did you enjoy high school??

i fucking hated it.

up until i was 11 or so, i'd been very happy: i was a bit of a loner, but i had friends and enjoyed my life. then i decided i had to align myself with a group; that i needed a proper "gang of mates". worst decision i ever made: i ended up hanging about with people i didn't really like, just in order to be part of something i didn't really want to be part of.

i wish i'd left after my GCSEs and gone to the sixth-form college (i remember my parents telling me they had no problem with me leaving the private school), but for some reason i stayed on and did my A levels there too. this meant any attempts - conscious or otherwise - to reinvent myself were absolutely doomed.

the sheer joy and sense of freedom i felt when i left blackpool is indescribable. i didn't come down for about two years.

15. Additional comments/ points of interest--

er, i think i've rambled on quite enough.

16. Favorite books.

the hitch-hiker's guide, lots of tom sharpe, some pg wodehouse. later, anything by kafka or thomas hardy. i found comfort in bleakness :)

17. Where/what, back then, did you think you'd be by now?

a journalist of some kind.

18. What would you now tell your teenage self?

i wouldn't say anything. i'd kick him in the balls really hard. it's what he needed.

2. Location/whereabouts?
Be11eville, Ontario

3. What did you listen to?
the most recognizable stuff was Depeche, Cure, Smiths, Cult, Cab Voltaire, P Furs, New Order, Skinny Puppy, Front 242, Nitzer Ebb, Sarah MacLachlan, Grapes of Wrath, Midnight Oil, Stone Roses, Moev, Crowded House, Ministry, Sinead, NIN, Dead Milkmen, plus a lots more that just aren't coming to mind right now, and I was a dedicated Brave New Waves listener.

4. What were your favorite things to wear?
oh i was a fashion disaster - bob haircut with streaks and spiked bangs, lots of black/navy sweaters or flannel checked shirts, purple and paisley, my dad's old private school blazer that made me look like i had football shoulders, safety pins on my pants, giant flowy black skirts, my dad's jeans cut off into shorts and with bleach spots all over them, absolutely shredded jeans, occaisionally i wore roots sweats or preppy ralph lauren button downs (i was never good at commitment)always hideous shoes like penny loafers without socks, scruffy desert boots or docs with big buckles on them. fuck.

5. What were your friends like?
at school i had a small group of friends who weren't exactly nerds, but were sort of naive, and we mostly kept to ourselves. at first it was because i was too shy to talk to anyone else, but then around my third year i found a second group of "cooler" friends from other schools and sort of lived a double life.

6. Did you get along with the parents?
didn't live with or interact much with my mom, and dad was rarely home. considering there was a lot of yelling and tears when he was, i'd say not really.

7. Did you have a job?
not until the end of school. Harvey's Hamburgers. it was awful.

8. Did you date?
after i got those new friends i mentioned, i dated a couple of them.

9. Did you go to prom?
junior prom only. i went with a bona fide nerd from my public shool who had suddenly gone all bad boy (in his mind at least) and i had an inexplicable crush on him. it went south quickly after that night though when he did things like chivalrously opening a taxi-door for me and then once i was in, he cluelessly sat in the front with the driver.

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?
i did yearbook - people always wanted my art skills - but really it was so we had our own room to hang out in at lunch and on spares.

11. What were your favorite school subjects?
art, english, biology and geography.

12. What were your non-academic interests?
interesting boys, sci-fi, music, drawing, escape from that town.

13. What were your favorite movies?
i'm not sure i remember what the real answer is here, but i do know that i watched Better Off Dead about 20 times.

14. Did you enjoy high school??
not usually. at first i was effortlessly great at a lot of things but my poor attendance level eventually created a huge mess. however, at the time, that seemed like one of my lesser concerns.

15. Additional comments/ points of interest--
i somehow turned out ok anyway.

Exactly, and they were right. French horn players.. insufferable. Tuba or baritone sax.. sarcastic and unpretentious. Drummers are the coolest people in the band. Flute players know a lot about music theory, actually, they know it all.

17. Where/what, back then, did you think you'd be by now?
New York, maybe? I don't know.

18. What would you now tell your teenage self?
Drink more. Yell at people.

1. First of all, what decade is/ was this? (no need for shyness here)

late 90s

2. Location/whereabouts?
Lake Mary, FL

3. What did you listen to?
Metallica, Aerosmith, Alice in Chains, and later on Slayer

4. What were your favorite things to wear?
flannel in 1995-1996, generic bullshit 96-97, Metallica shirts the rest of the way, over jeans. jeans. jeans.

5. What were your friends like?
nerdy

6. Did you get along with the parents?
yes altho dad was a dick sometimes

7. Did you have a job?
Steak 'n Shake for 6 months - quit in mid-shift

8. Did you date?
no, there was a girl with a mega crush on me whose heart I inadvertently stomped on while I was pursuing somebody else who didn't want me.

9. Did you go to prom?
twice with the person whose heart I stomped on. I had no idea cruelty wasn't just "being overtly mean" back then...

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?
drama 10-12, choir all four years, lettered 3 times, Madrigal "swordbearer"

11. What were your favorite school subjects?
choir, drama....I loved AP English but struggled to get Cs and Bs in the class and they told me I'd probably struggle in AP Senior year so I went back to honors, then got a 5 on the AP English exam (suck it fuckahs). slacked a lot.

12. What were your non-academic interests?
being a Fundamentalist

13. What were your favorite movies?
Sixth Sense, Scream, Arlington Road (didn't say I was the sharpest)

14. Did you enjoy high school??
fuuuuuuuuuuck no

15. Additional comments/ points of interest--
I was best man at my friend Joe's wedding last year. we met Freshman year. his wife was also an alumni of our school - but we had already graduated by the time she entered freshman year.

Oh man, how did you dig this one up?

1. First of all, what decade is/ was this? (no need for shyness here)
Early-to-mid '90s.

2. Location/whereabouts?
Two different (but not that different) parts of rural IN.

3. What did you listen to?
My musical tastes were about as far-reaching as they could've been for someone who was curious but geographically cloistered in the pre-internet dark ages. I listened to the prescribed alt-rock on the radio/120 Minutes, plus lots of Zep and an obsession with the Sundays.

4. What were your favorite things to wear?
Grunge really worked for me because dressing like a slob entailed pretty much the amount of energy I had for fashion.

5. What were your friends like?
Samples from across the spectrum but mostly stoners (nb: I was the one who did not get stoned) and art kids.

6. Did you get along with the parents?
Ehhhhhhh...

7. Did you have a job?
Yeah, I made the pizzas and delivered the papers and bagged the groceries.

8. Did you date?
A whole lotta nope followed by a long-term, (sort of) long-distance relationship.

9. Did you go to prom?
No. My gf was sad about it. I was (and likely still am) a dope.

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?
Art club president, yo.

11. What were your favorite school subjects?
AP English with a bullet, followed by art and then probably study hall.

12. What were your non-academic interests?
Hanging out, listening to music, reading comics, engaging in stupid creative endeavors with friends. My non-academic interests have been pretty static for decades.

13. What were your favorite movies?
I discovered Film Threat during my freshman year so I was into pretty much anything I read about in there that I could actually get my hands on.

14. Did you enjoy high school??
I didn't hate it but I certainly don't reminisce.

15. Additional comments/ points of interest--
I was a Navy brat growing up, so high school is only slightly less of a blur than the dozen schools I attended before that.

No better time than autumn to dwell on this sort of thing.

1. First of all, what decade is/ was this? (no need for shyness here)
Late 80s. Entered high school in 87, ended up dropping out/not returning after my sophomore year of 1989. Very unwise.

2. Location/whereabouts?
The burbs east of Atlanta.

3. What did you listen to?
My favorite band was KISS. This was actually an improvement because my favorite musicians in middle school were Huey Lewis and Phil Collins. (I did not, however, covet a watermarked business card.) By the end of high school I was moving across the musical border to slightly heavier stuff like Maiden, Venom, Mercyful Fate/King Diamond, and then to the much heavier stuff like Death, Dark Angel, the big 4 thrashers, etc. I also had a dub of the first Misfits Collection tape which became an obsession. And NPR's Music Through the Night (or whatever it was called then) was very important.

4. What were your favorite things to wear?
A JROTC dork, I actually really liked the uniforms. Well, not the horrid khakis, but the camis and dress greens. Other than that, of course it was all band tees and a denim jacket plastered with patches and pins.

5. What were your friends like?
The whole Breakfast Club gamut: jocks, band, drama, musicians, metalheads (or "headbangers" as everyone seemed to call them/us), fellow JROTC folk.

6. Did you get along with the parents?
Yes, even though I did dutifully follow the rebellion script, something I still feel guilty about. The whole quitting school thing was an obvious flareup of cosmological proportions but my parents ultimately were supportive of my lunacy.

7. Did you have a job?
Little Caesars. I even dressed up in the gigantic "Little Caesar" mascot costume for some kind of church function.

8. Did you date?
Nope. I was so inept. I did however start dating right after dropping out, when I was still quite inept.

9. Did you go to prom?
Not my own, but I went a couple years later to my then gf's. (A couple years after dropping out, I should add; otherwise that sounds odd.)

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?
Aside from the aforementioned JROTC, which accounted for a lot of time and energy, I was in the Science Club, the Literary Club, and the Key Club. I remember nothing about these things aside from the names.

11. What were your favorite school subjects?
Really I enjoyed it all, even, maybe especially, JROTC, despite my anti-authoritarian posturing. (There was an entire wing of the school dedicated to ROTC, complete with a firing range. The instructors, retired Marine Corps all, would smoke cigars in their offices between classes.)

12. What were your non-academic interests?
METAAAAAAAAAAAL. Going to shows. Watching Letterman. Amateur astronomy. Also writing.

13. What were your favorite movies?
To complete the caricature of the teenage metalhead, my cinema diet was pretty much slashers, ninjas, and sword-and-sorcerers. I remember the second Texas Chainsaw Massacre being a fucking event. (Renting it, anyway.) For no reason that I can come up with, however, the movie I watched the most throughout my middle and high school years was a made for TV detective flick called Triplecross -- starring Ted Wass and Markie Post. It's an eternal mystery why I became attached to this thing. Good odds I still have that VHS tape in a box somewhere.

14. Did you enjoy high school??
At the time, no. In retrospect that perpetual background radiation of angst seems nothing more than theater. I had loads of friends, excelled in my classes, got along with most of my teachers, was never bullied. A friend of mine and I had a sort of feedback loop that fomented many bad decisions and culminated in our decision to drop out.

15. Additional comments/ points of interest--
Before dropping out, my friend and I decided to "quit" the biology class we shared, mostly because we viewed the teacher as a tyrant. As a result he was moved to another classroom, merely to occupy space and not to participate, and I was simply ignored by the bio teacher for the remainder of the semester. It was all very surreal, very Bentley Little.

16. Favorite books.
An unending supply of pulp horror novels, thanks to a local shop called The Bookworm. My go-to author was Rober McCammon, a sort of second tier Stephen King. I think he's become a right wing crank or something. Collections of the Bloom County comic strip were also very crucial to my identity.

1. First of all, what decade is/ was this? (no need for shyness here)

Late 90s to 2003

2. Location/whereabouts?

Canada, near Vancouver

3. What did you listen to?

Talking Heads, Pink Floyd, Broadcast, The Pixies, Aphex Twin, Bjork, Portishead, Pj Harvey and Tori Amos.

4. What were your favorite things to wear?

Suit jackets, dress shirts, custom made t-shirts of Pac-Man, Tori and Bjork.

5. What were your friends like?

Spent a lot of time with theatre kids but I was mostly on good terms with everyone due to being an odd-ball physical actor that made people laugh. (I'm not funny on ILX though).

6. Did you get along with the parents?

For the most part, but my family is fairly religious so they tended to think my poetry writing or lack of interest in dating was problematic.

7. Did you have a job?

Worked at IHOP as a dish washer, with a kid who was younger than me and looked like Teddy Ruxpin. :-/

8. Did you date?

Did not date until grade 12 as I was coming out of High School.

9. Did you go to prom?

Yeah, brought a girl I had a major crush on but it turns out we didn't have much chemistry that way. Seemed like we got along better on ICQ.

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?

I was a theatre/video rat. Played Seymour in Little Shop and wrote a play in grade 12.

11. What were your favorite school subjects?

English, Drama and Video.

12. What were your non-academic interests?

Smoking pot near the 711, going to 711 for munchies and producing electronic music at home with Fruity Loops.

13. What were your favorite movies?

Mulholland Drive, Donnie Darko, Jacob's Ladder, Virgin Suicides, Amelie, Suburbia, E.T. and Waking Life.

14. Did you enjoy high school??

Enjoyed the social aspects of it the most and some of the academics (like English) in the earlier years but mostly liked the creative/social side. By Grade 12, was attending far less due to spares or using CAPP as an excuse to go buy cheese noodles. Not like CAPP prepared anyone for life though.

15. Additional comments
/ points of interest
--
n/a

16. Favorite books
catcher in the rye, 1984, animal farm, chrysalids, but mostly music magazines/books tbh

1. First of all, what decade is/ was this? (no need for shyness here)
late 90s
2. Location/whereabouts?
SE MO, US, an hour and a half NW from where rush limbaugh grew up, an hour south from where Ozzie did backflips
3. What did you listen to?
9th: dream theater, village people, queen 10th: dave matthews band, ben folds five, radiohead, mid-90s britpop, placebo, 11th: radiohead, smashing pumpkins, death cab for cutie, belle & sebastian 12th: radiohead, r.e.m, beatles
4. What were your favorite things to wear?
in 9th grade i wore this shirt that said "hocus pocus i'm out of focus", white text on black, blurry from up close but legible from a distance. i wore nothing but lightly saturated green and blue pants. a friend of mine refused to wear jeans and was very influential on me. no jeans.
5. What were your friends like?
from a distance, band and theater nerds. this was a small town in a shitty part of the country and they were really, really cool. lots of people were really down to earth. i laughed so hard, so often, my stomach hurt all the time. lots of really funny and creative people i had a ton of friends back then and i miss a lot of them intensely to this day.
6. Did you get along with the parents?
no, i didn't talk to my dad for most of high school and i was a total dick to everyone. one of my best friends killed himself and my dad wanted me to get over it way before i was ready too so i took everything out on him for a long time.
7. Did you have a job?
i worked at long john silvers for a couple years after i turned 16. fry cook. my sister was the shift manager most nights. it smelled like fried fish and chicken in our house.
8. Did you date?
no. i didn't hit puberty til high school was halfway over and by then i felt so confused and behind everyone. i was everyone's friend. i had a few intense crushes but could never say anything about them. some people felt sorry for me and i definitely felt sorry for myself, but in retrospect i was totally doing the weirdo fucking asshole "nice guy" routine and deserved what happened. i didn't discover masturbation for a really long time. that probably would have helped.
9. Did you go to prom?
the girl i wanted to take went with one of my best friends and i got really emo about it and didn't tell anyone. on prom night i ate a bunch of 3D doritos and played jungle strike on PSX. there were a bunch of worms that crawled down the basement walls.
10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?
i was the section leader in drumline, on the battery side. i played in a high school band that was well known - it was not a densely populated area and there weren't many bands, so just playing every couple weeks and pressing a CD made us locally famous. in high school my identity was completely musical. i started recording my own music and passing the links to confidants, hoping they'd share it with others. it was all really fucking lame on my part
11. What were your favorite school subjects?
i was a mathlete, and i really liked history as well.
12. What were your non-academic interests?
i'm trying to remember what i did in 9th and 10th grade. it was a weird time. i was moving away from baseball, a previous love, because i was still 4'10 and i just couldn't play with the bigger guys. in 10th and 11th grade i started getting high and occasionally drinking, and that started to become a bigger thing and general objective of the night. but the two years before that? i think i played a lot of videogames. i was depressed. i was sort of on the internet, but not in any communities, and it was so slow that i was just happy to read any page that fully loaded. it was a weird time.
13. What were your favorite movies?
braveheart. forrest gump. hoop dreams.
14. Did you enjoy high school??
i hated it. i slept a lot of the time. i'd finish the hw in class and then sleep in the back for the last 20 minutes. no one ever woke me up. i walked out to my car a lot and just drove off. no one ever checked, i never got in trouble. i worked at long john silvers at night. on the weekends. i'd save up all week to buy the starcraft 3-game + strategy guide bundle on PC, read the guide cover to cover, then play 5 missions and quit at the first sign of struggle. i spent most of high school obsessing over girls who didn't like me back. i was really pathetic. i lost my connection to god the first year, and then i started to get really antagonistic about that loss. i wasn't talking to my dad. i was the biggest asshole of all time to my family, and i worshiped my friends. i had a lot of really, really good, genuinely amazing times with my friends. i teetered back and forth on railroad bridges in total darkness, blackout drunk on vodka and fresca. i barfed on one of my friend's front lawns repeatedly throughout the year. a close friend killed himself and we all collectively lost our minds for a few months. i looked in the mirror and saw a little kid. everything was weird.
15. Additional comments/ points of interest--

looking back vs. when I took this, I wouldn't say that I didn't get along with my parents. They mostly left me alone (for better or worse), there were never real fights, I never got grounded - what I perceived as not getting along was more just distance and being very private.

Fuck yeah I'm so down for this. I actually ran into a few of my old teachers at a bar last night so good timing too

1. First of all, what decade is/ was this? (no need for shyness here)
2008-13 (my username checks out)
2. Location/whereabouts?
West Vancouver, Canada (yeah, yeah, I know)
3. What did you listen to?
Pavement, LCD Soundsystem, Neutral Milk Hotel, the Shins, the Wrens, kanye, the dismemberment plan. I was still in my early pitchfork phase, basically
4. What were your favorite things to wear?
button ups, t-shirts, shorts
5. What were your friends like?
They were oddballs and burnout-types. It embarrassed and exhausted me when i was young but looking back i wouldn't have wanted it any other way
6. Did you get along with the parents?
Yes, but not with my brother. we still barely talk.
7. Did you have a job?
Was a dishwasher at earls restaurant in grade 12. that job kicked my ass.
8. Did you date?
two 2-3 month long relationships. so nothing special, but i was a hormonal little fucker so i was miserable when they ended
9. Did you go to prom?
Yup. it was called semi formal where i was from. I got dumped 3 days before it so i didn't enjoy it too much. also the principal caught me drinking behind a trashcan when i tried to go in, but he let me in anyways when i told him i barely drank anything and that i got dumped earlier. I saw him last night at that bar but i don't think he remembered me
10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?
Rugby. School newspaper too but they barely had any issues. I sucked at both but i've gotten better at writing at least
11. What were your favorite school subjects?
english and social studies/history
12. What were your non-academic interests?
Bass guitar and running. I even had a few bands, which earned me serious cool points.
13. What were your favorite movies?
Barely watched films/tv back then that much so i'm not sure. I remember loving the Exorcist though
14. Did you enjoy high school??
Yeah, I'd say so. A few bad times, sure, but I was kinda unhappy in elementary school (gr 6-7 especially; hs is 8-12 in vancouver with no middle school) and every year in high school felt like an upward step so yeah it was good.
15. Additional comments/ points of interest--
My favourite memories of high school were probably going to record stores in vancouver and learning so much in them. Good times, good times, even if it was such a waste of money looking back because streaming services make it all easier these days

iirc

Aimless's HS dossier:

Decade? Location? I started HS in Sept 1968, age 13. I graduated in May 1972, age 17. Because my birthday fell in November, I was always the youngest student in my grade level. I grew up in Portland, Oregon (before anyone knew it existed).

Music? The stuff everyone knows from that era. Aside from whatever was on the pop charts and got a lot of radio play, I didn't explore much. otoh, I owned Cheap Thrills, some Dylan, a Mothers of Invention album, and my best friend 'discovered' BB King and played him for me, so it wasn't all Bee-Gees & Motown.

Clothes? Levis shrink-to-fit blue jeans and work shirts. It was the MOR alternative to hippie clothes.

Friends? I knew all the 'smart' kids who were in my classes, but I also hung out a fair amount with the poor kids, at least those who weren't too criminally-minded. I do mean poor, too. Borderline homeless. Jelly-on-white-bread for supper types. They seemed so happy to have someone just treat them like people.

Parents? My parents were super. Even if they didn't get much direct information about what I did and thought, they trusted me and never held the reins too tight.

Job? Dating? Prom? No jobs except brief temp jobs that lasted a few days at most, like selling ice cream during parades. Consequently, I had almost no money. This, plus my being so young in my grade meant no dating per se. It was always just hanging out with girls I liked, during and after school. Prom was never a thought in my head.

Activities? Clubs? I invented a new school club called the Apathy Club and actually got it officially sanctioned as a school club by the HS principal (name: Mr. Skinner!) It had the largest membership of any club in 1971-72. I was on the school's quiz team that appeared on a local TV station. I was a 'star' in several dramatic productions -- but not the musicals, where I worked stage crew instead. In short, I straddled the milieu of the computer geeks and the drama nerds. No sports.

Fave Subjects? English, drama, biology. I LOVED plane geometry, but hated trig.

Enjoyed HS? I successfully found ways to pass the time in HS that kept me from being too bored. I was known, recognized and widely liked. So, yeah, I liked it OK. otoh, it was a miserable and confusing time for young people, with the war and all the turmoil in the country. Nothing out there made much sense and the world kept changing in crazy ways every couple of months. There was a lot of barely suppressed desperation and mania around.

how worried was everyone about being drafted?

1. First of all, what decade is/ was this? (no need for shyness here)
Late 90s/early 2000s

2. Location/whereabouts?
NYC metro area

3. What did you listen to?
Black metal, dark wave, EBM, Shostakovich, Joy Division, Kraftwerk, experimental sound collage bullshit

4. What were your favorite things to wear?
Cargo pants and polo shirts

5. What were your friends like?
Druggies, burn outs, sadistic punks

6. Did you get along with the parents?
No.

7. Did you have a job?
Worked as a cashier in a grocery store

8. Did you date?
Yes. Had a bunch of girlfriends, but they were sociopathic creeps because they thought I was a "bad boy", but I really had a puppy heart

9. Did you go to prom?
Yes. I went stag, because I had nothing in common with any of the girls in my school

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?
No. I had my own extra-curricular activities. I organized and ran a pirated CD ring that expanded to another town/school system before I shut it down. Belonged to a group of hacker kiddies and ended up in an issue of Harpers for it.

11. What were your favorite school subjects?
German. Also, the principal was a philosophy Ph.D. and did a class on that for fun, and it made me wish they offered that in school.

12. What were your non-academic interests?
Obscure, untranslated Japanese video games

13. What were your favorite movies?
Conan the Barbarian, For a Few Dollars More, Dirty Work

14. Did you enjoy high school??
Absolutely not. I graduated "Most Likely to Change [Blow Up] the World" and was a local "celebrity" among the kids, but that wasn't the real me, and I fucking hated all of it. I've now disappeared into the mists from that world

15. Additional comments/ points of interest--
None

1. First of all, what decade is/ was this? (no need for shyness here)
1996-2002 (high school in the scottish system is a minimum of 4 and maximum of 6 years running from roughly age 12 to roughly 18. i started high school the month after i turned 12 and finished it the month before i turned 18)
2. Location/whereabouts?
hamilton, south lanarkshire, scotland. 12 miles south east of glasgow.
3. What did you listen to?
start of high school - nu-metal, korn and deftones were some of my first gigs. then got more into punk and pop-punk. ended up listening to indie and post-punk and electronic music around the time i left high school.
4. What were your favorite things to wear?
had a 90s baggy jeans stage. with hoodies and t-shirts. ended up dressing in slacks, chucks, plaid shirts, wool coats. so from one kind of dorky to another.
5. What were your friends like?
childhood friends who i grew out of during high school. my friend fat cha' and i met when we were 5 because he lived 100 yards from my home. he left school when we were 16 and ive never seen him since. i had moved towns between primary school and high school and my slightly older and non-catholic school attending friends in my new town were my enduring friends from that era.
6. Did you get along with the parents?
yes, they stopped making me go to catholic church when i was about 13 and managed not to notice my underage drinking until it had been going on for years already.
7. Did you have a job?
i delivered papers in the summer a few years.
8. Did you date?
no. i was definitely a nerd and social pariah and high school. the one girl i dated in high school didn't go to my school and so didn't know i was a social pariah, and i was friends with her older brother and drank and smoked weed with those guys (i was 14 at the time) so she mistakenly thought i was cool or badass or something. she dumped me after a month and i was super upset about it (we would later date when we were 19/20 and then again when we were 24/25). all the kids in my school were flummoxed as to why she went out with me because she was very traditionally good-looking.
9. Did you go to prom?
yes, without a date. i drank whiskey at an after party with a girl i liked (who had a boyfriend) and we started a flirtation which developed into a kind of chaste affair during our first year at university where we had some classes together.
10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?
no. there weren't really many school activities to speak of mind you.
11. What were your favorite school subjects?
history and english.
12. What were your non-academic interests?
i started drinking when i was 12 and getting drunk and high on weed were my main weekend recreation activities during high school.
13. What were your favorite movies?
godfather 1 and 2.
14. Did you enjoy high school??
no, i hated it. i was unpopular and that sucks, on top of that i am an extremely anxious person and the casual violence of west of scotland boys wasnt a great milieu for me. also suffered from depression from puberty at 12 til i was about 22/23. i used to every once in a while not go to school for a couple of weeks at a time - i would go and hide in the garage til everyone left then sleep til around 2pm). I would always get in trouble when the school eventually got in contact with my parents (would sometimes take a long time as i would delete voicemails they left during the day). i ended up enjoying university even less tho so whatever i guess

Decade? Location? 1974-79; Georgetown, 30 km outside of Toronto.

Music? On one hand, Neil Young and rock-criticky stuff like Highway 61, Who’s Next, and Let It Bleed. On the other, art-rock, glammy metal, and stuff too unforgivable to mention.

Movies? American Graffiti, The Heartbreak Kid, Jaws, The Paper Chase.

Clothes? Plaid lumberjack shirts, Adidas T-shirts, “painter pants,” overalls; see Dazed and Confused.

Friends? Basketball friends, drug friends, Fernwood Tonight/Gong Show friends--a lot of overlap.

Parents? They were great; I wasn’t especially communicative.

Job? Dating? Prom? Backshop at a golf course, washing clubs; a thousand crushes, but no; no.

Activities? Clubs? Twelfth guy on the basketball team.

Favorite Subjects? Math came exceptionally easy; liked English the last couple of years.

Enjoyed HS? It certainly had an effect.

how worried was everyone about being drafted?

My brother was one grade ahead of me and was the Student Body President. His proudest achievement was securing a draft counselor from the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers) who came once a week and talked to the students facing the draft about their options. It was a very popular service. By 1970 no one in my HS was enthused about the war, yet there were still hundreds of thousands of US soldiers in Vietnam, getting killed on a daily basis, as testified by the nightly news. So, yes, lots of worry. It was very real to all of us.

I was in the first batch of the "draft lottery". iirc, the projected cut-off for the call-up was around #150 and my lottery number was about #170. I tried very hard to believe this protected me.

i can't even imagine. thanks

what can I say? you're born into the world you're born into. overall, I'm grateful and feel enormously lucky. I never was drafted, btw, which means I won that lottery and I know it.

lol ok

1. First of all, what decade is/ was this? (no need for shyness here)
1998-2002

2. Location/whereabouts?
a catholic school in suburban boston, ma

3. What did you listen to?
90s matador and t&g stuff, built to spill, a bit of emo and hardcore. other than the emo this.....set me apart from most of my peers.

4. What were your favorite things to wear?
not really a concept i understood, just like wide jeans and t-shirts

5. What were your friends like?
i guess cool nerds is the easiest shorthand--bright kids with nerdy interests who weren't that awkward and did ok in our somewhat sheltered environment

6. Did you get along with the parents?
yeah

7. Did you have a job?
i worked 2 days/week in a small drug store

8. Did you date?
i dated one girl; the school was small and my class was particularly lacking in girls who were dateable given where i was at on the totem pole.

9. Did you go to prom?
yeah, went to both jr. and sr.

10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?
plenty of adult experiences have borne out the fact that i'm not a joiner, but i did academic decathlon and that was kind of fun in its own way.

11. What were your favorite school subjects?
english, history, normal lib. arts stuff

12. What were your non-academic interests?
music, playing guitar

13. What were your favorite movies?
this is really hard to remember! i'm just not a favorite movies person.

14. Did you enjoy high school??
i had a better experience than a lot of people for sure; it took about a year but i made amazing friends (who are all still my closest friends), and the vibe of the school was such that bullying/cliques weren't a huge deal--most ppl in my class figured out that coexistence was the easiest path to take. that said i never think about high school and to me it's a transitional period that got me to adulthood/independence. there's nothing about it that i miss at all.

15. Additional comments/ points of interest--
i guess the only thing interesting is that my friend group was like 100% sober and that was basically how we positioned ourselves contra other groups. it wasn't like a combative thing but we definitely spent some time and energy on it. it worked well enough and then everyone fell off the wagon in their first year of college.

1. First of all, what decade is/ was this? (no need for shyness here)
90s
2. Location/whereabouts?
Milton, Ontario, Canada
3. What did you listen to?
Nine Inch Nails, Tori Amos, Bjork, Lisa Germano
4. What were your favorite things to wear?
I liked Beck's fashion and bought Mexican-style shirts from the vintage store and described my look in retrospect as "miami beach hoser fag"
5. What were your friends like?
Evangelists. We would sit around a campfire talking about how we didn't believe in sex before marriage but I was blushing furiously because I was sucking off a dude up in Georgetown and my best friend was staring at me grinning smugly because he's the only one I'd told
6. Did you get along with the parents?
No, my stepfather was depressed and aggro towards me, he's great and we're great now, but at the time it was stress
7. Did you have a job?
Ski instructor
8. Did you date?
Had a girlfriend age 14, a secret boyfriend age 16, did have crushes on people around the school but was held back by a poor choice in hair
9. Did you go to prom?
I invited a girl I really was attracted to, I fixed my poor choice in hair before doing so, but it turned out she was attracted to my friend Scott and was waiting too see if he would invite him. I was sad about that. I don't know 'what happened next' was subconsciously devious, but I invited my highly sexually active friend from Toronto to come as my date instead. With no prompting from me, she fully seduced Scott and ended up having sex with him on prom night in his tent. I remember the girl-I-was-attracted-to getting into a car while this was happening to go home, and me being like "yeah? how do you like me now? have a nice night". She is now a dyke; I am now a fag
10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?
Long distance running and band
11. What were your favorite school subjects?
English
12. What were your non-academic interests?
Video games
13. What were your favorite movies?
I always loved 2001, since I saw it as a kid, but the first time I proclaimed "this is my favourite movie" was The Thin Red Line, lol
14. Did you enjoy high school??
No more or less than any other period
15. Additional comments/ points of interest--
I had a very good rapport with the drama teacher, but when I came back two years after graduation it was clear she barely remembered me, and that was a good life lesson

proms vmic, apart from you fucking someone entirely unexpected <3

3. What did you listen to?
Pavement, LCD Soundsystem, Neutral Milk Hotel, the Shins, the Wrens, kanye, the dismemberment plan. I was still in my early pitchfork phase, basically

i also had this phase

i discovered pitchfork just after high school ended and immediately entered into my early pitchfork phase

how worried was everyone about being drafted?

I had dropped out of college a week before 9/11, my mom immediately started trying to figure out if I could get Canadian citizenship via my (deceased) grandmother in the event of a draft.

And then my first year of uni was my poptimist phase where I constantly talked about how great R Kelly's Ignition remix and Ginuwine's pony were. I would've loved ilm if I knew it existed at the time

1. First of all, what decade is/ was this? (no need for shyness here)
early 90s
2. Location/whereabouts?
suburban northern new jersey, bunch of noveau riche republicans
3. What did you listen to?
pretty much exclusively zep, also classic rock radio. k-rock and there was another one i think. i spent years getting tape copies of all the led zeppelin albums. it took me a long time.
4. What were your favorite things to wear?
led zeppelin t-shirts and khakis. i wore led zeppelin t-shirts until they got holes in them.
5. What were your friends like?
nerds who called computer bulletin board systems. mostly non-white, now that i think of it - i was white and "catholic" but i didn't really get on well with that set.
6. Did you get along with the parents?
not really sure what that means tbh
7. Did you have a job?
yeah, i was a library page, shelved books at the local library
8. Did you date?
god no, i thought i was loathsome and disgusting and that nobody could ever possibly like me.
9. Did you go to prom?
god no, it sounded like the most awful thing ever
10. Were you involved in school activities like clubs and stuff like that?
yeah, i felt i had to in order to appear "well-rounded". fucking hated it. fake-ass bullshit. i was in key club until i sliced my hand open trying to remove some burnt cookies from a baking pan on the last day to get my "hours" in for key club. wound up in the hospital and said "fuck key club, fuck getting into a 'good college'" at that point. still proud of the lines from those stitches to this day. i was also a boy scout.
11. What were your favorite school subjects?
history, i loved history a lot. english was good too but the english teachers were fucking weird. the senior english teacher wore a tweed jacket and everybody knew he creeped on the girls in the class and sometimes fucked them.
12. What were your non-academic interests?
video games, computer BBSes, wearing women's clothes (the last one only in secret mind)
13. What were your favorite movies?
didn't really get into movies until after high school, tarantino and mst3k films and shit like that. in high school mostly i was into taping doctor who off NJN. i think i'd mostly gotten over my obsession with the police academy sequels by that point.
14. Did you enjoy high school??
academically, sure. because of the noveau riche thing the schools were pretty well funded and i had a lot of good teachers. i feel pretty privileged to have had the high school education i did.
15. Additional comments/ points of interest--
question too vague
16. books
oh, a lot of stuff. i read a lot of steven king. i was into the james bond books - still remember fleming describing genital "tucking" in _you only live twice_. (one of these days i'll read the book and realize it's not in there and be really disappointed). and lots of douglas adams. i read a lot of comics, too. _the demon_, was really into that one, though it went to shit when garth ennis took over. and batman. i loved the batman '89 film.