5 Weird Things I Did In High School That Didn’t Seem Weird At The Time

Use our bodies as a chalkboard. In high school, passing the time in class usually meant writing your friends notes and drawing all over their arms with Sharpies. WTF was that about? If a friend tried to draw on my arm today, I'd tell them to back up or else I'm calling the police!!!

By Ryan O'Connell

Updated 11 years ago, October 7, 2013

1. Having strangers buy me alcohol. At the time, I thought these people were awesome and “chill” but now I realize that they were really just a bunch of creeps trying to send me down the wrong path! If a teenager asked me to buy them alcohol today, I would tell them to keep their nose clean and to get a job, psycho! I am not contributing to your binge-drinking sexting parties or whatever else the kids do these days. I remember once standing in front of a liquor store in Malibu when I was 17 and getting these etch-a-sketch guys to buy me a bottle of wine. They did it and afterwards they asked me if I smoked glass. I was like, “What? Who do you think I am — a hippie? Who smokes glass? That sounds painful and dangerous!” I know now that they meant meth. Or PCP. Actually, I still don’t know what smoking glass means.

2. Hanging out with 20-somethings. For awhile, my friends and I hung out with these 22-year-old weed dealers and we seriously thought it was because we were so cool and mature. “We just can’t relate to anyone in our grade,” we’d think to ourselves. “I’m so glad we’ve been accepted by people who are on the same level as us.” We’d go over to their apartment (OMG, they have their own place!!!) and get stoned, play video games, and listen to 311. We were so grown-up! Now I understand that these guys didn’t hang out with us because we were mature. It was because they were so immature. I can’t imagine being 22 and hanging out with kids in high school. I mean, are you kidding me? The social shame alone would kill me. These dudes obviously had to outsource to 16-year-olds because people their own age wouldn’t be seen with them.

3. Casually hooking up with someone next to your friend. When I started having sex my senior year of high school, my best friend and I would bring our boyfriends over to my house, take them into separate rooms, have sex with them, and then reconvene in the living room to watch TV or play a board game. Like, WTF? Sex was so casual and cool, just like a normal hangout activity! “So after school, I’ll bring Bret over, have sex with him while you do whatever with Evan and then we can go to CPK afterwards. Sound good?” I feel like I had a healthier and more easygoing attitude towards sex at 17 than I do today, which is sort of depressing.

4. Use our bodies as a chalkboard. In high school, passing the time in class usually meant writing your friends notes and drawing all over their arms with Sharpies. WTF was that about? If a friend tried to draw on my arm today, I’d tell them to back up or else I’m calling the police!!!

5. Hang out wherever we could. Want to sit in a park for six hours? Sure! How about we sit down in those chairs at the mall and just look at each other for ten hours? Yes please. You have NO STANDARDS in high school. You’re just happy to be out of your house and with your friends. It’s kind of sad because today my standards have gotten impossibly high. Like, I don’t even want to go to my best friend’s birthday party! What’s wrong with me?