Rite of Passage #1
In 1990, I had my first real kiss — not the innocent kisses a kid shares with his playtime girlfriends, and so on, but something with real passion behind it (or at least what felt like it at the time). Her name was Karen, and we counseled at camp together. Sweet sixteen cliches aside, I've never really decided whether to regret or cherish the fact that this event occurred for me so much later than many of my friends, in this regard. Nevertheless, within a week of our intense little moment, she'd moved on to someone new.
Like most others I knew at 16, I got my driver's license. Unlike many of them, it took me three tries. I was never too embarrassed about it, though, because the first time the culprit was tapping the flag during parallel parking, an automatic fail which most will admit is somewhat difficult, and the second — well, I'm still not entirely sure what happened, aside from the fact that I'd turned right at a busy intersection, to find myself behind someone who was attempting to parallel park, and while I sat patiently with my left turn signal on, so that I could change lanes to pass around the parking driver, the trooper opted to fail me on her own discretion.
I got my first car, a little red Toyota Corolla, which I ended up putting nearly 100,000 miles on before I chose to trade it in several years back.
I won a seat in the school student council, which sufficiently made up for my loss in any of the elections the year before.
Because of my high school's serious lack of parking, only school faculty and seniors were allowed parking lot spaces. As such, the rest of us either had to be satisfied with walking a long way to the school building, or arriving very early to get a good spot. The time between 7:10 and 8:00 became a sacred time for a select group of Juniors to plan the day, finish up last minute homework, recruit each other for various activities (columns in the school paper, fund raisers, candy sales, etc), and generally, "create culture." Incidentally, the parking situation got steadily worse, as more and more local residences applied for no parking or 1 hour parking zones in front of their houses, pushing back the edge of school parking on block at a time.
My musical tastes shifted toward alternative Brit rock, focusing on bands such as Ride, The Wild Swans, Pale Saints, Ultra Vivid Scene, Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians. My discovery of contemporary acoustic musicians such as George Winston and William Ackermann the year before had begun to influence my personal musical creations, as well, and I threw out my rules for formulating effective preludes and fugues in favor of music that was far more simple and intimate.
I had my first "real" romantic relationship (actually, about two months). Unfortunately, she was grounded the entire time, so our social activities consisted of about 3 individual dates. I also learned a good life lesson about buying a girlfriend's Christmas present too early — it will bring a breakup in about the same time that finally putting down your things at a bus stop will cause the bus to arrive.
Like most others I knew at 16, I got my driver's license. Unlike many of them, it took me three tries. I was never too embarrassed about it, though, because the first time the culprit was tapping the flag during parallel parking, an automatic fail which most will admit is somewhat difficult, and the second — well, I'm still not entirely sure what happened, aside from the fact that I'd turned right at a busy intersection, to find myself behind someone who was attempting to parallel park, and while I sat patiently with my left turn signal on, so that I could change lanes to pass around the parking driver, the trooper opted to fail me on her own discretion.
I got my first car, a little red Toyota Corolla, which I ended up putting nearly 100,000 miles on before I chose to trade it in several years back.
I won a seat in the school student council, which sufficiently made up for my loss in any of the elections the year before.
Because of my high school's serious lack of parking, only school faculty and seniors were allowed parking lot spaces. As such, the rest of us either had to be satisfied with walking a long way to the school building, or arriving very early to get a good spot. The time between 7:10 and 8:00 became a sacred time for a select group of Juniors to plan the day, finish up last minute homework, recruit each other for various activities (columns in the school paper, fund raisers, candy sales, etc), and generally, "create culture." Incidentally, the parking situation got steadily worse, as more and more local residences applied for no parking or 1 hour parking zones in front of their houses, pushing back the edge of school parking on block at a time.
My musical tastes shifted toward alternative Brit rock, focusing on bands such as Ride, The Wild Swans, Pale Saints, Ultra Vivid Scene, Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians. My discovery of contemporary acoustic musicians such as George Winston and William Ackermann the year before had begun to influence my personal musical creations, as well, and I threw out my rules for formulating effective preludes and fugues in favor of music that was far more simple and intimate.
I had my first "real" romantic relationship (actually, about two months). Unfortunately, she was grounded the entire time, so our social activities consisted of about 3 individual dates. I also learned a good life lesson about buying a girlfriend's Christmas present too early — it will bring a breakup in about the same time that finally putting down your things at a bus stop will cause the bus to arrive.