Good heavens, it’s a meme! Heaven forfend!
1. Who was your best friend?
Well, I hung out with a couple of folks. Bob Arnold and David Bolt, primarily, but also Allen Thomason and Brian Sanders. I occasionally hung out with Pam Muse and Lisa Carroll, too. Bob wrote me out of his life the day he found out I was gay, Dave is still working at a manufacturing plant in Anderson to this day, I think. Last I heard (ten years ago), Allen was a Southern Baptist minister in the Miami area working with HIV/AIDS patients and counts as “one of the cool ones”. Pam is a housewife in suburban Atlanta. Brian and Lisa, I have no idea.
2. What sports did you play?
I was the video manager for the football team, which gave me a reason to be in the locker room around naked guys. Woo! Too bad it took me another eight years to figure out I was gay. I was also the captain of the school’s academic quiz team.
3. What kind of car did you drive?
Early on, a crappy Plymouth Horizon, then I inherited my parent’s 1979 Ford F-150. Man, I loved that truck.
4. It’s Friday night, where were you at?
Over at Dave’s house, playing D&D until 2 AM. Yeah, it was sad, but we had a good time anyway.
5. Were you a party animal?
Nope. I don’t think I ever attended any wild parties while in high school, and certainly didn’t drink.
6. Were you in the “In Crowd”?
Not hardly! We were on the outside, and largely ignored. Which was fine, really.
7. Ever skip school?
Nope. I was a good (if boring) little boy.
8. Ever smoke?
Bleah. Absolutely not. When I was something like seven years old, I was curious about my mom’s cigarettes and snuck a puff on one. It was the nastiest thing I have ever tasted and put me off smoking ever since.
9. Were you a nerd?
Well, at least I didn’t have tape on my glasses. Other than that, good heavens, yes.
10. Did you get suspended/expelled?
Not in high school. I was suspended in elementary school for fighting. In Catholic school, even. I win!
11. Can you sing the Alma Mater?
No. I can’t even remember anything about it.
12. Who was your favorite teacher?
Mr. Howell, for AP American History was a very cool guy. Also Mr. Pohl, for AP Calculus and the academic quiz team advisor, was one of my favorites until I saw him a year or so after I graduated and he acted like he didn’t even recognize me. That was pretty disillusioning.
13. Favorite class?
Definitely Latin. I really enjoyed the language and translating, and it actually stood me in good stead when I visited France, since so much of the vocabulary there comes directly from Latin.
14. What was your school’s full name?
Thomas Lucas Hanna High School
15. School mascot?
The yellow jacket. Being in South Carolina, all of the schools pretty much copied the ACC colleges around them, in this case the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets.
16. Did you go to Prom?
I went to the senior prom. It was with Mary, a girl that I had met through an online BBS. She was a very driven girl, if not particularly pretty, who probably would have loved to date me. The prom itself was not particularly memorable, except that we have pictures of us all gussied up on our front porch, and I recall that Mary spilled her drink on her dress at dinner before the prom. Other than that, I don’t recall much of it.
17. If you could go back and do it over, would you?
No thanks, not at all. The self-knowledge and the self-esteem that I’ve gained since then are irreplaceable and I wouldn’t give it up for the world.
18. What do you remember most about graduation?
Not much. Graduation was rather anticlimactic for me, and I don’t remember anything notable about it or the summer afterwards.
19. Favorite memory of your Senior Year?
One of the numerous trips with the academic quiz team to Winthrop College in Rock Hill, SC (just south of Charlotte), where the state tournament (aka “Winthrop Challenge”) was taped. We came in third in the state that year. Those were a lot of fun – hanging out with friends, getting the day off from school, and seeing new (albeit not particularly exciting) places.
20. Were you ever posted up on the senior wall?
I’m guessing this is a “wall of honor” or something. Our school didn’t have one of those.
21. Did you have a job your senior year?
I had worked prior to that slinging frozen yogurt at TCBY, but I don’t think I was working during the school year. I did make some money on the side writing spreadsheets in Visicalc for my father’s company, though.
22. Who did you date?
I didn’t, though I suspect there were a couple of girls who were interested in me. I, of course, was completely oblivious at the time.
23. Where did you go most often for lunch?
Even though I wasn’t in the band, we usually hung out in the band room during lunch, where I had my nutritious lunch of a Snickers bar and a Coke. I can remember hanging out there one day when someone shouted from the band director’s office, and we all spent the next hour huddled around a small television, watching news coverage of the Challenger disaster.
24. Have you gained weight since then?
Oy. I don’t want to think about it.
25. What did you do after graduation?
See question 18. Evidently, not a lot that was memorable.