My salad days, when I was green in judgment, cold in blood

Despite my best efforts, I was never socially ostracized in highschool. As a self-identified punk, I thought it was really important that I be shunned by my peers. Tragically, with the exception of a bell-pepper incident that I've been repressing since the tenth grade*, I was always more or less appreciated by my trendier classmates. They all definitely thought I was cynical, and even bandied the word "bitch" around a little bit, but they also thought I was funny, and since I could be liberal with the answers to my homework, I was pretty consistently in-cast (as opposed to outcast.) After Avril Lavigne dropped her first album, it even became cool to be seen with me and my friends, much to our eternal chagrin.

Despite our general acceptance, my friends and I definitely stuck out in highschool. We had weird clothes, weirder hair, and Dayna even went through a phase where she wore a tulle petticoat as a skirt for weeks at a time. Our finest fashion moments, however, began when Billy came home from the 99 Cent store with a pair of shoes. That's right. Shoes. 99 cents. For both. They were hideously ugly, and vaguely resembled a disfigured pair of converse that had been repeatedly run over and then re-assembled. They were also uncomfortable; the soles were, judging by the smell, made from recycled tires and they were about half as wide as could be reasonably justified. But somehow, despite all that, they were so fucking awesome. Breifly abandonning our staunch commitment to individuality, Lauren and I bought a pair too, and wore them EVERYWHERE, depsite the fact that they made it uncomfortable to walk or stand.

I wore those shoes until they literally fell off my feet in the Pitzer parking lot. They reminded me of a better time when classes were easy, lunches were free, and friends had a loyalty that bordered on maniacal.

The other day, Christine and I were in the Montclair 99 Cents store when I saw them: the shoes of my salad days. I picked up a pair and the acrid scent of used tires reminded me of bad shows in skate-store parking lots, of house parties where the beer was cheap and the fights were frequent (though for the most part, mild) and of the way I thought febreeze acutally hid the smell of smoke from my father. I was tempted to buy another pair, but stopped myself. Those days are never coming back, and I'm not even sure I would relive them if I could. Though my new shoes aren't quite as cheap, they're taking me places I need to see.


*Because it would be unfair to deny it, the bell pepper incident went as follows: for some inexplicable reason my sophmore year, Dayna, Courtney, David and I all sat at a table next to the cheerleaders in our highschool cafeteria. Out of nowhere, Dayna pulled a bell pepper out of her salad, dipped it in her ranch, and tossed it over her shoulder where it landed in the luxurious curls of one miss Stephanie Smith (last named changed to protect the obnoxious.) Though the damage was minimal, Stephanie screamed for a solid four minutes and demanded to know who launched the missle. We were all too busy laughing at the hysterics to give a proper answer, so they all decided I did it. (I guess I have that criminal aura, what can I say?) I had mostly forgotten the incident when a string of ANGRY girls cornered me in the locker room, determined to beat me up to prove their undying devotion to Stephanie and try and assimilate into her popular group. Deciding that I had to either go big or get beat up (which would have actually happened, our school was no stranger to violence) I unleashed a stream of rage and profanities that somehow convinced those girls they didn't want to go there, but landed me in detention for a week. Despite the detention, I considered it a victory. Dayna never admitted her guilt, and to this day thinks its hilarious that it almost caused a fight.