Ins and Outs

I never really cared about being part of the in-crowd back in my school days. How much of that was personality and how much was religious is difficult to say.

In terms of personality, I never really cared about fitting in too much although I always wanted to have a few good friends. There was at least one year in high school that were a little lonely when two friends moved on and my one remaining friend was slotted into a different lunch hour. So, I ate alone that year, and I suppose that I went for a walk in the second part of my lunch break ... or something. Still, he and I would more often than not meet up after school and walk over to the local variety store for a coke before the buses came to take us on our separate routes. In the bus, I was by myself, but the trip was short, and I was pretty well the first one off.

Whatever my personal proclivities and values, I was surely affected by my religious culture. When you are brought up Pentecostal, you know you are different, at least here in Canada, although I susoect  that might not be as true in much of America.

I knew I was different and had suspicions about the world. I knew that I was to in the world but not of the world, and that is a tough role for a kid to naviagte, (John 17:14, James 1:27 etc) so I know that that made me more aloof than I needed to be.

Consequently, high school was not the happiest time of my life although I didn't exactly wallow in self pity either. As I said, I usually had a few friends and pretty good friends at that, so I did have some sort of social life.

As a bit of an aside, I was never too much bothered with keeping up with 'in' clothes. I think I went through one year with pretty well two shirts and one pair of pants. Maybe it was just part of the year, for I had to adapt from shirts and ties in my former school to casual clothes in the new one. So I guess, casual clothes were in somewhat short supply for the first few months anyway.

Which does bring me to another memory of two times when I did want different clothes, and that goes back to that former school with the more formal dress code.

It is this, as silly and simple as it sounds. Since we not only wore shirts and ties but jackets too, at least sometimes, I remember wanting a suit jacket that had two back vents rather than one. For some reason this seemed important to me. I think I eventually got my heart's desire. Similarly, I wanted winter boots (rather important in Canada) with a two-zipper flap up the front and not the kid-like galoshes with a top strap that pulled around. You see, you could keep those zippers undone, let the flap hang down, and be ever so kewl. Crazy, eh?

In these years, I don't wear the almost de rigeur men's tribal piece of apparel — the ball cap. I refuse to comply. I do wear hats and caps, but they are the kind that I want to wear when I want to wear them. More about this at a later date. Probably.