I Was a High School Band Geek.
When I was a skinny 6' tall 14-year-old, I agonized over that. In my Freshman year of high school, I could see who the popular kids were at my small high school, which had only about 500 students. The football players, the cheerleaders, the handsome and pretty kids. I was skinny, awkward, and wore clothes from Sears and J.C. Penney. I didn't think I'd ever fit in. I didn't think I'd ever be one of those fortunate kids who always seemed to be surrounded by smiling, laughing others. I was 14 and worried. I was just a band geek.
It was a difficult year. I couldn't find my way out of it at all, and was feeling sorry for myself.
But, the next year, something changed. It turned out I was a pretty good band geek, and I could sing, too. I got straight As in my classes. I began to recognize other kids like myself. We weren't great looking, nor were we very socially adept. We were just teenagers going through being teenagers. So, I started making friends with those kids - the kids in the band, the kids in the chorus, the kids in the academic honor society.
Pretty soon, I discovered that life was not so terrible. There were even girls among my new friends who were happy to go to a movie with me or to a school dance. They weren't the school cheerleaders, but they were still cute and fun to be around. I hung out with others who were not the obviously "popular" kids. We had fun. We had romances. We did goofy things together.
I gave up wanting to be one of the cool kids, and stopped feeling sorry for myself. I smiled a lot more. I did OK for the rest of high school. My friends did the same. By giving up on the need to stand out socially, we all enjoyed ourselves maybe even more. We went unnoticed by the popular kids, who had their own stuff to do.
DU, I suspect, is full of people like me. We're the political geeks. We're the ones taking stuff seriously that others never think about very much. We're concerned with weird things like equality, fairness, the environment, and other geeky things. We've found our group of like-minded people and people we get along with.
It's a good thing!
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Then the band's oboist graduated, and the band director handed the school's oboe to me and said, "Learn to play this." Instantly, I became even more geeky, 'cause who plays the oboe, after all?
That turned out great, because nobody plays the oboe. I got good on it somehow, which led to spots on honor bands, including the state honor band, because there just weren't many oboists around, and I could play the music.
Sometimes, being the weird kid works out pretty well. 
Lots of conservatories give scholarships for oboe players - there aren't that many people willing to play it!
Google "Paul McCandless" from Windham Hill - beautiful stuff! (also a fraternity brother!). 
But, there was this one french horn player...
And one whose mom took her to the "big town" to protest the war when I was 16 years old. My brother was serving at that time, but what he was fighting was just wrong and he could have died. I took that really seriously, it wasn't against those who fought, it was against the stupid rich white guys who sent him and not their own kids. So yes, I took things a little seriously 
. My senior thesis in 1973 was on Watergate.
My next door neighbors are TOTAL stoners and I know 'em ... they have their med cards and stuff.
Pretty sure I could take care of ya if you're ever in the neighborhood MM 
Same thing happened with me w/oxy's in the early 2000's. You'd be amazed how fast $90/day adds up
You're not alone in quitting HS being a good decision, wish I'd done it at 16. I worked during HS, both outside as a motel maid and at school, which cut badly into social time and set me up for another way to be set apart than just being one of the poor kids. (You can imagine how I appreciated Gingrich's suggestion that poor kids should be taught to work by having to clean bathrooms in return for lunch.) I was very fortunate to seldom be actually unhappy, though, and life was less traumatic than just very limited compared to the usual stories.
But like you I dropped out, got a full-time job in a casino, new adult friends from many backgrounds and broader horizons, and the world just opened up. For me, "dumping" the rigid HS hierarchy and adolescence (or so I thought) for a big, adult world at 17 was amazingly liberating. Those who worked in that world were the winners, but we partied and talked about the coming revolution all the time anyway.
Not everyone I knew survived either, of course. Drugs flowed free everywhere, and then of course this was 1969 and for most of the boys I'd known graduation meant Vietnam. 50 years ago. God.
but had a lot of friends who were. The cool kids moved away and they are still snobs! Most are trump supporters on Facebook.
I had nothing in common with them then and I have even less in common with them today!
I’ll take a bank geek any day!!!!
if I had any musical ability 
my claim to fame in HS was producing the "alternative" (underground) school newspaper
...we used mimeograph machines in those days in rural Michigan 
One morning I was more enthused than usual about singing and projecting rather strongly. All of a sudden the choir director slammed on the organ and shouted, "WHICH ONE OF YOU IS SINGING EXTREMELY FLAT???"
I was kinda subdued for the rest of my choir participation.
Last edited Sun Feb 9, 2020, 04:21 PM - Edit history (1)
Not a picture of my high school Latin club, but it might as well be
So, yeah, I'm a geek. And a dork.
I was also on the Student Council for a bit, and generally made good grades (though I was too inconsistent to reach Honors Society level). I wasn't in the Radio Club, though -- that would have qualified me for an honorary lifetime pocket protector!
I played trumpet in the band, starting in jr. high. There were lots of great kids in band, and many who shared my dorky sense of humor. (Likewise Latin Club.) We had a lot of fun and learned a lot about teamwork, getting along with kids from varied cultural subgroups (one of the few opportunities in my school for students from different racial and socioeconomic backgrounds to hang out together on an equal footing), and collective creativity. And, oh yes, I learned to read music, too (after having been an ear-only pianist since childhood.)
I probably should have been a drummer, because I was always a rhythm nut, and I loved the cadences the drum section composed for our football game appearances -- super cool. But I was a ringleader in doing head arrangements of things like popular TV and movie themes for us to horse around with during rehearsals, and harmless idiocy like playing tunes on our detached mouthpieces during gametime lulls -- thus simultaneously annoying and amusing our band director!
Concert band was another story -- there we got to play pieces by composers like Holst, Rossini, Wagner, and Tchaikovsky (the 1812 Overture was a real highlight).
It was a great experience, and one I advocate for any kid with a musical bent. Today I get together with friends and play music sometimes (though my meager trumpet chops have long since faded).
