Our Mother
Saying that a person “peaked in high school” is a particularly brutal kind of smear, because not only does it imply the faintest of praise — as in, they were at their best before it really counted — it also makes a damning conclusion about the person’s future.
The phrase calls to mind the kind of stock villain you might find in an 80’s teen comedy: over-privileged, arrogant and utterly deserving of comeuppance. In that way, it functions as a populist pejorative, a wish against homecoming queens, star athletes, maybe the occasional perky perfectionist with an unsustainable drug problem.
That’s mostly fiction, though. Most teenagers, even the gifted ones, are still too dumb and full of potential to peak at 18. And generally, the people who rise to the top in high school are the ones who rise to the top after high school. Plenty of prom kings become CEOs. Most dweebs stay dweebs.
But because we are conditioned to avoid such smears (and, of course, because adolescence is such a struggle for most of us), it is pretty uncool — or, at the very least, unusual — for one to say that he liked high school.
But I really did. It may not have been the best I’ll ever be, but it was probably the most fun I ever had.[1] For all the homework and extracurricular obligations and manufactured adolescent drama, high school was a place of comfort for me, of community. I found myself retreating to it more often than I retreated from it.
This may not compute with many of you. I understand that my circumstances might be unique. Maybe it’s me — maybe I “found myself” at a comparatively early age and thereby avoided the highly enriched angst that paralyzes so many teenagers.
Maybe it was my parents, who gave me a relatively wide berth of freedom and autonomy. (I would argue that I earned it, but it is to their credit that they trusted me as much as they did.)
Maybe it was my friends, not only because they were unanimously good friends who loved and supported me, but also because they were genuinely good people who were able to have fun without being drunks, criminals or assholes.
But a good deal of my success I owe to the school itself. Every school touts their philosophy of valuing, encouraging and protecting each student, “unlocking their potential” by “fostering academic excellence” and “showing them all the beauty they possess inside.” Webster High School did all that, but it did more than that.
The feverishly dedicated administration, the wildly passionate faculty and staff and even the strangely enthusiastic student government created a community whose warmth stood in direct contradiction to the surrounding weather.
It is said that it takes a village to raise a child; I was surrounded by Village People.
Webster High School was and is a testament to the value of a first-class public education, even in an era of a flagging local economy, surging enrollment and increasing responsibility for the most vulnerable students.[2] In my view, high-quality public education is the union’s best defense against entrenched aristocracy, its strongest inoculation against ignorance and the most trustworthy agent of the American Dream.
I don’t know if free public education is a birthright, per se, but commitment to it is the obligation of any country that seeks to lead, prosper and endure. It is an investment in intellectual infrastructure, without which everything else collapses.
Everyone, including my daughter, should have access to the kind of education I received in Webster. But public schools face existential challenges on a number of fronts.
Notwithstanding the moral bankruptcy of the jackbooted stooges in Trump’s Department of Education or the penurious misery of anti-tax zealots, I was recently moved to action by a more literal kind of assault.
I’ll yield here to a letter I sent earlier this year to Carmen Gumina, now Webster’s Superintendent of Schools:
I should admit that the whole idea of dueling alma maters has been kicking around in my head for a long while. But the events of the past year — and the realization that I would have to do it by myself — was what inspired me to just do it already.
I did have some help. All the thanks in the world go to my college brother Jason Menkes, who contributed essential quality-control, arrangement and production assistance. (That’s his silky voice in the samples below.)
Here is the final product.
Titans Rule the World (Webster Thomas High School)
I Will Always Be A Warrior (Webster Schroeder High School)
Both songs together (Warriors in left channel, Titans in right channel)
Mr. Gumina, for his part, seemed chagrined to inform me that Webster Thomas High School, at least, already has a school song (mine is better, I think, but you be the judge). But he also said “love the music!!” and said that he would “share with the principal and the choral director as well as with the student council advisors.”
That was a while ago now, and I haven’t heard back. I am reluctant to press the matter on my own behalf and I am content to let it go. But I do want to share this project with my old classmates and everyone else who inspired it, and if it should it invoke in them some similar feeling of pride, that’s all I could have asked for.
Late in my senior year of high school, we had one of those award ceremonies where people get their achievement trophies and perfect attendance ribbons or whatever. It’s not typically an occasion with a lot of surprises, but I was genuinely befuddled when I was announced as one of several recipients of the “School Spirit Award.” It seemed like the kind of prize you would give to someone who paints his or her face at football games. That wasn’t me.
It had to be explained to me that the honor was given to those who embodied the spirit of Webster High School and its ideals. Only then did I appreciate the value of the award, and ever since I have tried to live up to it.
I don’t think I peaked in high school. I made too many mistakes back then. But it was the best place I could imagine to make those mistakes. I owe an irrevocable debt to everyone who made that place what it was. For now, I can only sing its praises and work to ensure that its spirit does not fade.