It took me a while to write about this. I don't know if it started when a friend from Facebook contacted me from high school a couple of years ago. Maybe the idea for this blog came to me over 25 years ago. I pretty much put my high school experience on the backburner in my life. I kept distant from those days. I kind of put those days behind. Sadly, I pretty much left those days for dead.
In high school, I was an outcast-- probably THE outcast. To say I was different from everybody else was the grandest understatement of all understatements. I didn't fit in. Thanks to certain "in" groups-- I wasn't allowed to fit in. Those groups, at least I thought anyway, had it out for me. I was short, fat, kept to myself, I walked pigeon toed, and I talked under my breath. I was shy, it probably came from the stigma of being "different" from everybody else. I also went to "special" classes because of an "undisclosed" disability. In fact, I went to "special" schools due to this "undisclosed disability"in my earlier years. To this day, there is no explanation of this "undisclosed disabilty". Yet I was considered "normal" and "cured" of this "undisclosed disability" in 1993. But that's another story.
I had recently transferred high schools in my junior year. I had my share of crap from the previous high school, yet this was nothing that I was about to face in my new school. My mom just got this better job plus the landlord was selling the house that my mother and I lived in. As you noticed, I left out my father. When I was 2, my father abandoned me and my mother for "undisclosed" reasons. Funny how the word "undisclosed" keeps on popping up in my earlier years. She found a duplex apartment in a "better" neighborhood" and I was in a supposedly "better" school district. It was like Beverly Hills 90120 and I was Brandon Kelly except the school was overpopulated by a bunch of Shannen Dohertys. Then again you can say it was Freaks And Geeks except I felt like the entire cast of Freaks and Geeks attending Beverly Hills High. The moment I attended the new school- the alienation began.
If I was a character from The Breakfast Club, I would be what happened if the Anthony Michael Hall and Ally Sheedy characters had a baby. I had the "out there" traits of Ally Sheedy and the geekishness of Anthony Michael Hall. Judd Nelson would've been my buddy. However, the school was overrun by the many Molly Ringwalds and Emilio Estevezes who attended. It was probably the reason I hated John Hughes' films of the '80's.
The name of the high school said it all- Babylon Junior and Senior High School. And YES the town (or "village" as they call it) is called BABYLON! The "ruling class" was literally "the ruling class": mostly white WASPish neo-Reaganites decked out in Izod polo shirts with two parents and a brand-new BMW (known as a "Bimmah") parked in the driveways of their freshly manicured French Colonial "mini-mansions". The majority of the society of Babylon Jr. & Sr. High lived "south of Montauk (Highway)" which was the main street in Babylon NY. The who's who of who's who lived there- Bob "Captain Kangaroo" Keeshan was one of the celebrities that lived in Babylon at the time. Ironically, Rodney Dangerfield was actually born there- so there were others who had less than "respectable" experiences in Babylon, Long Island.
The name of the ruling class were The Preps. If you didn't wear Izods and Benettons you weren't cool. If you listened to different music then they did, you weren't cool. If you weren't a Prep you just weren't cool. Where I lived wasn't cool for a Prep, I mainly lived in a mixed part of town, mainly working middle class in between Montauk Hwy and the Babylon-Montauk line of the Long Island Railroad (LIRR). So the usual insults began i.e "Fatty", "Nerd", "Freak", "Faggot" (even though I'm VERY straight), and so on. But it got worse, since I was in Special Ed (yet I was fully mainstreamed in my Senior year) I was called "Retard". I was called this so many times that the Preps wanted to make me think I was actually retarded. A couple of occasions they asked me where was my orange helmet. I actually had aspirations to go to college, of course the Preps laughed in my face. "Go to Trade school like the other retards!" said one of them. The namecalling and teasing grew worse. Since my mother wasn't married, the kids (who never met my mother) called my mother a "slut". And of course I got the "wrong side of the tracks" line since I was middle class. And since there was "no middle class" according to Prep standards, therefore I was considered "poor white trash".
Since I looked different and I was still in my "MY Mom still buys my clothes" phase, I was a moving (but unknowing) target. I had my share of a Prep pointing to another Prep and yell out "She likes you!" as the group of Preps chortled with laughter. And the functions they threw like the "Junior Deb" (I'm not kidding), I was teased so bad I didn't even bother going to "The Junior Deb" and the Senior Prom. I was even called the N-Word by (ironically) a Prep who was also black. To top it all off, I was even called a commie because I didn't "love" Ronald Reagan. The ones I exacted my revenge on were three girls who were the center of the Preps. The one girl, was originally from California and was into of all things the British band MODERN ENGLISH (not kidding) according to her, they were the "best band in the world" and she wanted to be their groupie. The two girls who joined in with the wannabe Modern English groupie were two of her lackeys who all joined in on the teasing. There were a few others who targeted me: the Black Prep who called me the N-word, the "Star Quarterback", and the wuss who hit me on my head with a text book and ran away and claimed to "beat me up". For the last six months of my Senior year in Babylon High School, I was just concentrating on graduating and getting the hell out of there. I vowed one day I will come back to Babylon High School and tell these Reaganite a-holes to screw off!
In the home stretch of graduating I came across unlikely allies. I realized there were fellow outcasts in my school. One group of outcasts that I pretty much owe my life to were the Stoners of the school except they were called "dirtbags" by the Preps. The so-called "dirtbags" are heroes in my book. They knew what it was like to be outcasted and excluded by the "in crowd". Some were the greatest people I came in contact with and my regret was that I should have known them when I first attended Babylon. They taught me that it was okay to be different. Some if not all of the "dirtbags" supported my ideals in life and made me feel that I wasn't stupid after all. Another regret was that I should copped a hit in the back of the van-but I had a good contact high! There were other non-"dirtbags" that I owe a debt of gratitude to. These were the people who no matter how bad I felt always made me laugh and never made me feel left out. The "dirtbags" also even defended me when some Preps tried to insult (and on a few occasions tried to assault) me. THANKS GUYS, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!
The comeback came after I graduated: I lost a great deal of weight, I ended up attending college, I even wore DESIGNER clothes with labels. I even got MISTAKEN for a Prep! I worked hard to be a different person from my Babylon High School days and it paid off. Yet, as the days wore on like a thick woolen blanket, my life as I knew it in Babylon Jr & Sr High school soon faded. I never even mentioned my high school during my college days. I wanted to go on my life. As I was going to Grad School, it was getting close to my 10 year reunion-I never asked my Mom who was still living in Babylon at the time if I got an invite to the reunion. I never cared. If I was invited to ANY Babylon High School Reunion, I was going to bring all my college degrees with me and go to one of those doubters (preferably my Guidance Counselor) and stick my degrees in their faces! But as time went by, my feelings of vindictiveness slowly died out. Yet aloofness set in; thus Babylon was dead to me.
Then things happened in my life, I got a Master's Degree, got a 'real' job, and I moved to several places. In 1994, I first moved cross NY State and lived in Buffalo for nine years. In 2003, I moved from Buffalo to Hickory, NC (which is 50 miles Northwest of Charlotte and 70 miles East of Asheville, NC). My experiences in High School and College made me a Liberal Democrat for the past 20 years. My experiences in Special Ed made me work in the field of Human Services in which I work with the MR/DD population for the past 12 years. I gained most of my weight back, but I'm trying to lose the middle age spread, but this time I'm happy. I never married (even though I had some close calls). Even though I acheived my goals out of anger I still feel that l achieved. The exception is that I am happier than I ever was! And I'm STILL SINGLE ladies!
I also became less vindictive and I was not as aloof. With Columbine and 911 happening, I put my life into perspective. When many students and teachers got gunned down in Columbine High School (Littleton, Colo.) by two "outcasts", how much I thought about my days in Babylon. It could have been worse, and I thank God I never had the option nor I was evil enough to do what they did. No one deserved to die, even if they were Preps or jocks involved. Then a couple of years later, I realized that there were probably graduates of Babylon Jr. & Sr. High School flying in those planes or were in in those buildings when they came down on 9/11/01. Revenge was fleeting. Life was to important to ignore. Forgiveness became essential. I was never into the idea into forgiving and forgetting in my younger days. As I approach my 42nd birthday, I realize that I might not have time to forgive and forget. Even though I'm still fairly young, why should I end up as an angry old man?
All I would like to say for those from Babylon High's class of 1985 I contacted in Facebook, THANK YOU FOR KEEPING IN TOUCH! Also I want to thank my fellow outcasts from Babylon Junior & Senior High School. If I offended anyone during those days, I am sorry. And I forgive (believe it or not) anyone who have offended me when I attended Babylon. With the 25th year reunion coming next year, I will be happy to attend and fly to New York and left the forgiveness begin. Most of all, I forgave the biggest critic in my life-MYSELF!
I also want to say that Facebook helps me reconcile with my past and my high school days shouldn't be a "dirty little secret". Facebook and a few friends from Babylon gave me the courage to face the past and not lock the door to keep me from my past. I am eternally grateful to Facebook. If anything, I would like to invite anyone from Babylon High & Junior High School to add me as a friend on Facebook and MySpace. I know now that there are former BHS students out there who were outcasts like me. I would like to talk to some of my fellow outcasts, the door is open! The door is also open to some "Preps" out there: If you are willing to communicate with me- I might even apologize back. Then again, no apologies are necessary for either side.
In high school, I was an outcast-- probably THE outcast. To say I was different from everybody else was the grandest understatement of all understatements. I didn't fit in. Thanks to certain "in" groups-- I wasn't allowed to fit in. Those groups, at least I thought anyway, had it out for me. I was short, fat, kept to myself, I walked pigeon toed, and I talked under my breath. I was shy, it probably came from the stigma of being "different" from everybody else. I also went to "special" classes because of an "undisclosed" disability. In fact, I went to "special" schools due to this "undisclosed disability"in my earlier years. To this day, there is no explanation of this "undisclosed disabilty". Yet I was considered "normal" and "cured" of this "undisclosed disability" in 1993. But that's another story.
I had recently transferred high schools in my junior year. I had my share of crap from the previous high school, yet this was nothing that I was about to face in my new school. My mom just got this better job plus the landlord was selling the house that my mother and I lived in. As you noticed, I left out my father. When I was 2, my father abandoned me and my mother for "undisclosed" reasons. Funny how the word "undisclosed" keeps on popping up in my earlier years. She found a duplex apartment in a "better" neighborhood" and I was in a supposedly "better" school district. It was like Beverly Hills 90120 and I was Brandon Kelly except the school was overpopulated by a bunch of Shannen Dohertys. Then again you can say it was Freaks And Geeks except I felt like the entire cast of Freaks and Geeks attending Beverly Hills High. The moment I attended the new school- the alienation began.
If I was a character from The Breakfast Club, I would be what happened if the Anthony Michael Hall and Ally Sheedy characters had a baby. I had the "out there" traits of Ally Sheedy and the geekishness of Anthony Michael Hall. Judd Nelson would've been my buddy. However, the school was overrun by the many Molly Ringwalds and Emilio Estevezes who attended. It was probably the reason I hated John Hughes' films of the '80's.
The name of the high school said it all- Babylon Junior and Senior High School. And YES the town (or "village" as they call it) is called BABYLON! The "ruling class" was literally "the ruling class": mostly white WASPish neo-Reaganites decked out in Izod polo shirts with two parents and a brand-new BMW (known as a "Bimmah") parked in the driveways of their freshly manicured French Colonial "mini-mansions". The majority of the society of Babylon Jr. & Sr. High lived "south of Montauk (Highway)" which was the main street in Babylon NY. The who's who of who's who lived there- Bob "Captain Kangaroo" Keeshan was one of the celebrities that lived in Babylon at the time. Ironically, Rodney Dangerfield was actually born there- so there were others who had less than "respectable" experiences in Babylon, Long Island.
The name of the ruling class were The Preps. If you didn't wear Izods and Benettons you weren't cool. If you listened to different music then they did, you weren't cool. If you weren't a Prep you just weren't cool. Where I lived wasn't cool for a Prep, I mainly lived in a mixed part of town, mainly working middle class in between Montauk Hwy and the Babylon-Montauk line of the Long Island Railroad (LIRR). So the usual insults began i.e "Fatty", "Nerd", "Freak", "Faggot" (even though I'm VERY straight), and so on. But it got worse, since I was in Special Ed (yet I was fully mainstreamed in my Senior year) I was called "Retard". I was called this so many times that the Preps wanted to make me think I was actually retarded. A couple of occasions they asked me where was my orange helmet. I actually had aspirations to go to college, of course the Preps laughed in my face. "Go to Trade school like the other retards!" said one of them. The namecalling and teasing grew worse. Since my mother wasn't married, the kids (who never met my mother) called my mother a "slut". And of course I got the "wrong side of the tracks" line since I was middle class. And since there was "no middle class" according to Prep standards, therefore I was considered "poor white trash".
Since I looked different and I was still in my "MY Mom still buys my clothes" phase, I was a moving (but unknowing) target. I had my share of a Prep pointing to another Prep and yell out "She likes you!" as the group of Preps chortled with laughter. And the functions they threw like the "Junior Deb" (I'm not kidding), I was teased so bad I didn't even bother going to "The Junior Deb" and the Senior Prom. I was even called the N-Word by (ironically) a Prep who was also black. To top it all off, I was even called a commie because I didn't "love" Ronald Reagan. The ones I exacted my revenge on were three girls who were the center of the Preps. The one girl, was originally from California and was into of all things the British band MODERN ENGLISH (not kidding) according to her, they were the "best band in the world" and she wanted to be their groupie. The two girls who joined in with the wannabe Modern English groupie were two of her lackeys who all joined in on the teasing. There were a few others who targeted me: the Black Prep who called me the N-word, the "Star Quarterback", and the wuss who hit me on my head with a text book and ran away and claimed to "beat me up". For the last six months of my Senior year in Babylon High School, I was just concentrating on graduating and getting the hell out of there. I vowed one day I will come back to Babylon High School and tell these Reaganite a-holes to screw off!
In the home stretch of graduating I came across unlikely allies. I realized there were fellow outcasts in my school. One group of outcasts that I pretty much owe my life to were the Stoners of the school except they were called "dirtbags" by the Preps. The so-called "dirtbags" are heroes in my book. They knew what it was like to be outcasted and excluded by the "in crowd". Some were the greatest people I came in contact with and my regret was that I should have known them when I first attended Babylon. They taught me that it was okay to be different. Some if not all of the "dirtbags" supported my ideals in life and made me feel that I wasn't stupid after all. Another regret was that I should copped a hit in the back of the van-but I had a good contact high! There were other non-"dirtbags" that I owe a debt of gratitude to. These were the people who no matter how bad I felt always made me laugh and never made me feel left out. The "dirtbags" also even defended me when some Preps tried to insult (and on a few occasions tried to assault) me. THANKS GUYS, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!
The comeback came after I graduated: I lost a great deal of weight, I ended up attending college, I even wore DESIGNER clothes with labels. I even got MISTAKEN for a Prep! I worked hard to be a different person from my Babylon High School days and it paid off. Yet, as the days wore on like a thick woolen blanket, my life as I knew it in Babylon Jr & Sr High school soon faded. I never even mentioned my high school during my college days. I wanted to go on my life. As I was going to Grad School, it was getting close to my 10 year reunion-I never asked my Mom who was still living in Babylon at the time if I got an invite to the reunion. I never cared. If I was invited to ANY Babylon High School Reunion, I was going to bring all my college degrees with me and go to one of those doubters (preferably my Guidance Counselor) and stick my degrees in their faces! But as time went by, my feelings of vindictiveness slowly died out. Yet aloofness set in; thus Babylon was dead to me.
Then things happened in my life, I got a Master's Degree, got a 'real' job, and I moved to several places. In 1994, I first moved cross NY State and lived in Buffalo for nine years. In 2003, I moved from Buffalo to Hickory, NC (which is 50 miles Northwest of Charlotte and 70 miles East of Asheville, NC). My experiences in High School and College made me a Liberal Democrat for the past 20 years. My experiences in Special Ed made me work in the field of Human Services in which I work with the MR/DD population for the past 12 years. I gained most of my weight back, but I'm trying to lose the middle age spread, but this time I'm happy. I never married (even though I had some close calls). Even though I acheived my goals out of anger I still feel that l achieved. The exception is that I am happier than I ever was! And I'm STILL SINGLE ladies!
I also became less vindictive and I was not as aloof. With Columbine and 911 happening, I put my life into perspective. When many students and teachers got gunned down in Columbine High School (Littleton, Colo.) by two "outcasts", how much I thought about my days in Babylon. It could have been worse, and I thank God I never had the option nor I was evil enough to do what they did. No one deserved to die, even if they were Preps or jocks involved. Then a couple of years later, I realized that there were probably graduates of Babylon Jr. & Sr. High School flying in those planes or were in in those buildings when they came down on 9/11/01. Revenge was fleeting. Life was to important to ignore. Forgiveness became essential. I was never into the idea into forgiving and forgetting in my younger days. As I approach my 42nd birthday, I realize that I might not have time to forgive and forget. Even though I'm still fairly young, why should I end up as an angry old man?
All I would like to say for those from Babylon High's class of 1985 I contacted in Facebook, THANK YOU FOR KEEPING IN TOUCH! Also I want to thank my fellow outcasts from Babylon Junior & Senior High School. If I offended anyone during those days, I am sorry. And I forgive (believe it or not) anyone who have offended me when I attended Babylon. With the 25th year reunion coming next year, I will be happy to attend and fly to New York and left the forgiveness begin. Most of all, I forgave the biggest critic in my life-MYSELF!
I also want to say that Facebook helps me reconcile with my past and my high school days shouldn't be a "dirty little secret". Facebook and a few friends from Babylon gave me the courage to face the past and not lock the door to keep me from my past. I am eternally grateful to Facebook. If anything, I would like to invite anyone from Babylon High & Junior High School to add me as a friend on Facebook and MySpace. I know now that there are former BHS students out there who were outcasts like me. I would like to talk to some of my fellow outcasts, the door is open! The door is also open to some "Preps" out there: If you are willing to communicate with me- I might even apologize back. Then again, no apologies are necessary for either side.
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