No one can drink when they're in high school

No one knows how drink alcohol in high school, it's almost a rule. Like most things in life you have to fail before you succeed, everything is a learning process and you have to try anything in life to know how to experience it. Drinking in high school is sort of like this except for the fact that in life majority of people learn from their mistakes after the first or second time and then work towards accomplishing something correctly. For some odd reason though drinking alcohol between the ages of 14 and 18 is something that no one ever really grasps. Is it because your mind is too over stimulated trying to quickly learn how to interact and thus "make out" with the opposite sex? Or, even more difficult and awkward in suburban high school, same sex. Is it because you're trying to hard to desperately fit in so you try and wow some socially cool strangers by drinking an entire canteen full of vodka in 2 minutes? In any case right about the time you start to get chest hair your brain seems to shut off the part that gives you power of any real logic and grants you the power to say to yourself "I've drank 5 beers and puked in a recycling bin in a cute girl's garage... I should probably drink that 6th beer I have as fast as I possibly can." Why do teenagers think that drinking as fast they possibly can is always a brilliant idea? This idea never fades. Maybe it's because you have to be home by 12:00 a.m. or maybe it's because you're getting a buzz and having such a good time you want it escalate quickly, that can certainly be understood. However when you continuously drink to excess and then have to get up at 8:00 a.m. on Saturday morning force down bacon and eggs to keep appearances and then mow you're lawn in July heat, is it worth it? Apparently yes. One note: Mowing your lawn is a good cover if you're hung over because you can throw up and then sound of the mower will mask the sound of projectile vomit and then you can mow over puke and turn it into untraceable particles of party evidence.
Teenage drinking effects the part of the brain that would tell you not to drink half a 40 of rye when you're 14 and call the gorgeous, popular girl in school and tell her she has a big nose (of course Val didn't tell me why she wouldn't talk to me for the rest of the summer until I was 18). It effects the part of the brain that would tell you not to throw a gallon of red paint into a dryer. It effects the part of the brain that would remind not to drink wine coolers until you're blind and ride you're bike into a cement wall. It effects the part of the brain that would remind you not to beer bong Goldslagger while on acid. It effects the part of the brain that makes you take off tuxedo pants half way to your house on a strangers lawn for no reason. It effects the part of the brain that tells you not to shoot Paxton Smith with a roman candle at point blank range. Yeah, there are tons more I'll write more as I think of them.

Way too quiet

It's quiet. Oh so supremely quiet. Only the sound of Airwalks and Adidas Campus' and baggy pant legs brushing against each other are heard as you walk through Reddendale. The only sound you can hear is Weezer blasting through your Sony Discman. No cars are driving through the neighbourhood at 10:00 pm on a winter night in January. The only sound is you grunting as you lug a 60 pound amp across a park through snow with a bass on your back to jam before you stop and decide to just sit and listen to Op Ivy or watch Much Music Spotlight on REM. Growing up with such extreme silence and nothing really to do usually causes you to rebel in a loud fashion. This can mean kicking over a recycling bin or lighting off fire crackers or anything that will result in a large banging noise. Smashing an empty botte of beer you stole from your dad? Think of being in Toronto amongst sirens and cars honking, people yelling, music blasting out of store fronts and restaurants and clubs. Hearing someone kick over a recycling bin isn't going to make a difference, no one will probably even notice or hear it at all actually. However, in a neighbourhood that was infinitely silent like mine making a big loud noise would make a big difference and would be exciting. In fact it would probably make headlines in the township newspaper. So, playing bass on the front porch or pulling the hood ornament on my neighbour's Cadillac to make the horn beep was always a promising way to break the silence and get your adrenaline racing as you ran and hurdled hedges back your own yard. That was usually just the time I had to be home anyways, just in time to watch the Wedge or catch Rancid as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live.

Adopting music

I had an interest in music before 1994 but not like after my grade 8 summer. I was into the Doors and I would listen to the Beatles albums that my parents had but I was completely out of the loop concerning the anything new. Of course I knew Smells like Teen Spirit and Jeremy and November Rain but as far as knowing names and albums I was in the dark.
My best friend Jess had really gotten into Grunge for the past few years but even though my best friend was listening to new and underground music I still had taken no interest. Music wasn't my thing but Jess and I found common interest in comedy and more specifically Kids In The Hall. One day at the end of grade 8 maybe it was just after graduation or maybe just before I saw the video for Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden. Something immediately clicked between me and that song and the incredible video that accompanied it and all of a sudden I was in love. I called Jess and asked her if she had the album that Black Hole Sun was on and she did, Superunknown.

By the end of the week I was listening to Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots, Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins. Also in that week I had not stopped watching Much Music ever since I had seen Black Hole Sun and was craving more music and I was now taping music video onto VHS. I somehow had connected so deeply with Alternative music and it now taken over my life and all I cared about was listening to music and learning about new bands. Through out the summer I would begin to listen to Radiohead, Soul Asylum, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blind Melon, Alice in Chains and of course the band that completely took over the summer and bled into the fall of my first year of high school the Offspring. The single on the radio Come Out and Play was catchy and fun but did not reflect the rest of the punk attitude record. When my friends and I first heard the whole album probably around the end of summer it was a sound that none of us had ever heard. We wanted more. I grew up listening to mellow sixties records that were collecting dust in my parents stereo cabinet. I was certainly familiar with new music and had been taking an active interest in it recently but this music was like nothing any of us had ever heard. It was fast and aggressive with a lack of solos and it just churned out raw energy and emotion. I started listening to music at a time of great transition. Kurt was dead and Grunge was still popular but it was on it's way out. All the Grunge artists with new records were the last gasp of the genre. When you really think about Grunge was almost an 80's genre when the scene which was close to dying was thrust into the spotlight with the popularity of Nirvana. Grunge was very dirty and hard for a general population to listen to but it had great ideas and was marketable. The big energy of sound with good song writing ideas, a classic rock tone and pop sensibility had now turned into great, big albums. Now, it had paved the way for the radio punk explosion which would include mainly Offspring and another band from the fall of 1994 and just in time for back to school: Green Day. It was the year punk exploded and music just seemed to be getting better and better.

Anna's quote

"If you weren't white in Kingston, chances are you were ceramic and holding a lantern on someone's lawn."
Anna Sudac

Things to do without a car

Picture a neighbourhood on the edge of a city. Dividing you from the city is a giant minimum security penitentiary farm field, on the other side is a conservation area. There is a small plaza with 6 stores and only 2 of any interest to teenagers. There was also a grocery store a bank a car garage and a hockey arena. So now, things to do without a car in a neighbourhood with nothing to do.

Climb on top of the public school and retrieve tennis balls
Go to the pizza parlour and get a steak and cheese sub
Go to Quick Check and buy 3 for a dollar cans of Pepsi to drink with steak and cheese sub
Eat steak and cheese sub in Robbie's basement
Play ping pong
Drive golf balls across Joreen park and into Chris Milner's pool
Try and beat the Legend of Zelda
Go to the concerrvation area Lamoins Point (this was a lot more fun when driving was added to these trips)
Ride your bike into the lake
Go swimming in the lake
Have a bon fire at the lake and hope girls show up
Hang out in front of Quick Check buy glass bottles of Coke and then turn in the bottle for 40 cents worth of candy
Smoke pot and then walk 4 km to Dairy Queen
Jump off the cliff at the quarry
Hang out in front of Quick Check some more
Play guitars in Robbie's basement
Go skateboarding
Throw snowballs at cars
Throw snowballs at a bus
Get served under age at the Chinese restaurant
Cut lawns for money
Shovel snow for money
Ride your bike to the mall and buy 2 4 1 pizza, Pavement and Ween cds and posters of Cindy Crawford
Watch Dazed and Confused over and over and over
Watch a Clockwork Orange over and over and over
Steal a Playboy from Quick Check
Hang out in front of Quick Check some more
Push a haybail onto the road
Walk around at night
Take a bus to the mall and smoke cigarettes in the food court
Listen to Green Day and the Offsping over and over and while playing NHL 94 on Sega
Steal golf balls from the Celebrity Sports World driving range
Hit golf balls into the lake and then go and find them
Play Frisbee (this involved 2 people tossing a frisbee to each other on the road)
Play 500 up (basically hit baseballs for your friends to catch)
Go to a party and hit on girls from other high schools
Date said girls for a week until their older boyfriends find out
Stay in Robbie's basement until the coast is clear
Go pool hopping (jumping into strangers pools at night when they're asleep)
Dye your hair
Shave the sides of your head your head (the under-cut)
Cat walk your bike down some steps
Go to the hospital
Fall out of a tree
Go to the hospital
Get drunk and fall off a roof
Suck it up and don't go to the hospital because your parents will find out you got drunk and fell off a roof
Just walk around
Talk about seeing a girl topless
Talk about how much more fun things will be when you can drive

Jeff Hopkinson

Jeff Hopkinson was a powerful force in my high school life because he was a good friend but was also as I would put it, the was the Ferris Bueller of my school. Jeff was clever and an individual all his own always wearing a ball cap like most but Jeff only had maybe 2 hats for the duration of school. By the time the first one was ready to be replaced it probably should have been replaced about 3 years previous. Things like this didn't matter to Jeff what he cared about was doing what he enjoyed and nothing else. And what Jeff enjoyed was alcohol mostly. But, don't get the wrong impression Jeff wasn't the popular football player who got drunk every weekend, got in fights and stole your woman. Instead Jeff was the guy who got drunk and lifted fake credit card numbers off the internet somehow and tried to order infrared glasses to a hotel.

Jeff was tech guy for the school which essentially meant running the lightboard for all the events that would happen in our auditorium. Through five years of doing this job Jeff managed through running events to somehow get a key to every door in the school. Since when you're a teenager school dominates a lot of your time finding ways to challenge that time becomes a full time job. And when you have a friend with a lot of keys that job became a career. We had a key to the elevator which came in handy from time to time and a key to the roof if you wanted to go and have beer on spare or a game of hockey during the winter when it froze.
Of course he also had a key to the lighting booth which Jeff had converted into a fairly well stocked bar. When police dogs were set loose into the halls to sniff out small time dealers pot in their lockers we quickly learned that we were in the clear because dogs can't smell alcohol in glass bottles. In fact I doubt they were ever even trained to because who figures some 17 year old is going to set up a bar in their high school. Well, they never met Jeff.
Jeff worked for internet Kingston because he was good with computers and he also worked at a grocery store. The only thing I can remember about Jeff and the grocery store is that he had taken a giant roll of expired meat stickers so that he could place individual stickers on his beers at parties so he wouldn't lose said beer.

The really cool stuff came from Internet Kingston. Jeff got everything that we have today that are a part of everyday life first. He got his hands on the first digital camera the summer of grade 11 which would have been 1997.
We brought it to my cottage and Jeff got a plastic case to take it under water so we could take pictures of ourselves underwater off of my dock. Then we launched Chubby bottles of pop at boats off my deck with a giant 3 man slingshot Jeff had built.

Jeff also got the first cd burner a concept I couldn't even grasp when he told me it. Mix tapes were still envogue and the fact that you could now in 1997 make you're own mix cd was a big deal. Using this to his advantage Jeff did a marketing project on his grocery store, wrote it drunk the night before and talked in length about how Adult Only Video located beside the grocery store helped improve business by luring perverts in to buy food. Then he handed the entire project in on a cd rom he had made from the brand new burner and got 100%.

Jeff had a new idea everyday and it was always devious yet carefully planned like the time he tried to buy a giant, old coastguard boat and throw keg parties on it until he raised the $60, 000 cost to fill the tank and then travel to Florida. It was a good idea but Jeff's bid on the vessel wasn't high enough at $2,000. He had a working stop light in his basement that he aquired when it blew down in a wind storm. Jeff could played the tin flute and guitar and he loved the Pogues and Guns and Roses. Infact Jeff dropped grade 12 math the day of the exam so he could go and see the Pogues in Toronto.

When he went to college he got kicked out of the only 2 bars in his college town in under a week and as the resourceful person that he is figured out how to make wine from a package fermented in mason jars.

White town

left: 18 in the 90's

Kingston was probably the whitest place in the entire world. It was old and white. The city was one of the first settlements in Canada and it's close to 400 years old (I just got back from Vienna though and apparently that's not that old.) It was settled by white British people, it was home to the first Prime Minister of Canada Sir John A McDonald and it was the first capital of Canada. Everyone had the last name Smith, McDonald, Johnson or Anderson. And because I grew up in the suburbs every kid was named, Ryan, Brian, Matt, Robert, Chris, Karen and Jessica. There are no black people in Kingston. Wel,l in actuality their are probably something like 100 black families spread out over a city of 160,000 people. I'd say that would put it in the range of housing about 40 black people and that's probably being generous. We had some Philippino kids and lots of Portuguese families but that was basically our extent of diversity. Even so, Portuguese kids are pretty damn close to being white and all the Philippino kids were either into skate punk, dj Shadow or Notorious BIG and both were Catholic so they were not exactly separated from the Johnson's and the Smiths of the town. What were they going to instead anyways? They all grew up in white suburban culture too. And, what did it matter? None of them when to my high school they all went to Catholic school so I had no chance of exploring non white, white kid culture. Any real shot of being effected by other cultures was totally out of reach unless you want to count Marilyn Manson (he was a hot ticket in the 90's.)

My high school was something like the second oldest secondary school in Canada, it was built in 1792. It was incredibly old in every respect. It was also on Queens University campus which is probably the most elite university to go to in Canada. So what happens? Well, rich people in Canada are old and white and they send their rich white kids to school in Kingston. So now we have more white kids! And not only that... rich, snotty white kids! And the only thing they brought to the city was a "better than you" attitude and occasionally good hash.