End of High School
Prom night was the 25th of May. I don’t know why but I was actually looking forward to it. I didn’t have a date and I didn’t really want one. Lamar took Ashley and Mike took Eva, the German exchange student. We went to Ashley’s house first so everyone could get pictures of us all dressed up then we all went to The Olive Garden to get something to eat. I went to get some gas while we were waiting for a table an ended my stupid car decided that it didn’t want me to be able to turn the key after I got back in. I struggled with it for almost 5 min before I could get it to move. I got back in time to order my food and I then had a brief moment of retardation: I told Ashley that my birthday was the day before. I should have known better. Before we left, six of the waiters came with a little cake and sang me “Happy Birthday” but it wasn’t as bad as I expected. We ended up making it to the prom at 10:30 and stayed for the last 30 min of it. Mike and Ashley were vote prom prince and princess and Roosevelt and Allison H. were king and queen (they are engaged by the way). After getting some pictures taken and say hi to some people we left. I almost got lost getting back to Mike’s house and my car ended up cutting off on me. We all then went to someone’s house (except Ashley who has a strict father) to hang out and watch movies and stuff (“The Others” was pretty good).
A few days later I was over Mike’s again with Lamar and we got a call around 10:00. It was from my house. They told me to stay over Mike’s for the night because my room caught on fire and it was pretty messed up. I was pretty scared for a second. I had just gotten the Evangelion DVD box set and was only able to watch it once. Then I realized we had some kind of insurance that could replace it so I didn’t care but then I remembered that I had just written some new stuff and that all my writing and drawings were in there but then I remembered that what is done is done and there was no point in worrying about it. I went home the next morning to check it out. My couch was burnt to a crisp (it was the main source of the fire), my CD cases were every where but all my CDs were safe, my PS2 was trashed along with all my games but only one of my memory cards were messed up, and my close for graduation were screwed along with half the close I wear and the rest reeked of smoke. All my art and most of my writing was fine and all my DVDs worked fine after I wiped them off and my TV seemed to just be very dirty. Every thing that was messed is going to be fixed or replaced but my room is now uninhabitable so I kind of moved in with Mike at his mom’s house. But one very good thing that came out of this is that my stuff for newspaper class was in there, giving me an excuse for not having the 6 pages done :P
On the 31st the school took a trip to Kings Island. Me, Mike, and Lamar drove down there (Lamar being the very fast driver) after we went to the school to get the tickets. We road some rides, ate some pizza, and Lamar continually complained about the complete absence of booty. One of the most fun things was the bumper cars. Lamar was trying to get me but I just calmly maneuvered away from him. When we went to ride The Beast, Rachel and Sara were operating it. Rachel was in the booth and called out all three of us. Around 7 or 8 o’ clock it started raining like a bitch. That was real fun too. I like the rain and Lamar and Mike didn’t seem to have much of a problem with it either. The only bad parts was when it rained hard enough to hurt and that I couldn’t see right because my glasses got all watery and I can’t see perfectly clear without them and that my wallet was ruined. When we got to the exit Lamar started to talk with these three girls and we ended up talking to them for about half an hour until the rain let up. They were ok but one was a little crazy. It was a nice trip.
Graduation is a good thing. I never have to go back to High School again and I got more presents than Christmas and my birthday combined. The day before graduation (June 2nd) I had a little get together at my aunts house to celebrate my graduation with a bunch of relatives I barley ever see anymore. It was a little uncomfortable saying hi and receiving congratulations from people who half of them I couldn’t remember their names but the big pile of envelopes and the couple of presents made up for it. I ended up with lots of cards, a pin, a new wallet (ha-ray!), and over $1000 after all the cash and checks were put together. My mom said it is hard to get stuff for guys. The main event of the thing was a little slide show that my dad has made a tradition to make for each of his kids graduations. I was the 3rd one so I knew what to expect. The nice thing was that since he knew I knew he was doing it, he let me pick the music to go with the slide show. It started out this “Auron’s Theme” from Final Fantasy X, then “Wonder Boy” by Tenacious D, “My December” by Linkin Park, “Angel’s Son” by Sevendust, then ended with “My Letter” by Flaw. It was petty cool.
Me and Mike had to get up early to go to graduation practice the next day. We dressed in the dress pants, shirt, and tie that we had to wear under our robes. Then when we got there, everyone else was wearing close that they would sleep or play basketball in. They all made fun of us and called us the Men in Black. Some of them called me Mr. Wakefield, our computer teacher (Raven, you know how much that pissed me off). We were pretty mad. It seemed that Lamar knew that we didn’t have to dress up but he didn’t tell us. So after Mike’s mom took us out to breakfast, we decided to really look like the MIB. We went to Wal-Mart and got two big water guns and 2 pair of black sunglasses. We filled them up and went looking for victims. We couldn’t find anyone. We ended up going to Nead’s house. Mike got him out of his house but when he saw our guns he ran for his hose and got us worse than we got him. Then we found out that most of the seniors, including Lamar, were at the High School taking care of some last minute business. We only got Lamar but that was our main target and we got him pretty good. Then, later that day, graduation finally arrived. The first noticeable thing was my place in the line as we marched in. The line went boy-girl-boy-girl and Tatum was in front of me and Sara was behind me. They are 2 of the shortest people in our class and I’m the tallest so it was pretty funny. We walked in and sat down. Then came the speeches. The student speakers said the basic “good-bye, good luck, it’s been fun” stuff and I didn’t pay much attention. It was the superintendent’s speech that stood out. She decided to talk about some 9-11 stuff and encouraged us to be firemen and go after crap or something like that. Tatum was making fun of her the whole time and I had to try my hardest not to crack up.
After graduation I continued to live over at Mike’s mom’s house. We never really piss each other off, we just laugh at ourselves, so it has been nice. We just play video games and watch TV and crap and it has been extremely cool. But like all good things, this to must end. My room still isn’t fixed up but I’ll be going home tomorrow to live in our camper. It’s not that bad though. Before I even got my room, I used that camper as a room for months. I hope it gets put back together soon. I leave for college August 31st.
-June 19, 2002
