TimWoolery.net Documenting the Journey and the Learning Curve

Roseanne, High School and Me

As a child of media-influenced culture, I spent a goodly portion of it trying to make my life emulate everything that I saw on TV or the movies. It took a lot of time to realize that I probably wasn't going to end up like you see on the TV and if my life resembled anything at all, it was probably like the Roseanne show. Blue collar, wise-cracking mom with a dark sense of humor, money issues, family issues, in-law issues. I related a lot to that show, most of the time with a sense of shame.

I'd like to tell you that there's a magical ending to this story, where it either ends with me getting that telegenic lifestyle or the Readers Digest-like change of heart. The real answer was too ambigous to really say. I've come to appreciate that the telegenic lifestyle doesn't lend itself to much personal growth and that my life is too complex to just be sewn up in a two-hour movie that fades to montages of 'my perfect life'. At the same time, sometimes I imagine what my life would have been like in different circumstances and I get that funny little pain that hits just behind the xiphoid process.

I've learned several lessons from the road less traveled. One of them being that since there wasn't going to be a helping hand to get me through life, I'd better grow two of my own. Started working when I was 8, been doing it ever since in one shape or another. I don't regret what I learned from it although I wish I could have spent more days in bed instead of being up at the crack of dawn chucking papers onto a front lawn. Been out with my friends instead of saucing pizzas wearing that doofy Little Caesars apron. Having some friends to be out with would have been nice too, now that I think of it. I was never 17 even when I was 17. There goes that pain again.

I had to get married to learn how to dress, I think. I always wanted to be able to dress nice and look sharp but somehow I couldn't get past that reptilian section of my brain that kicked in at the mall. People pay how much for this? My fashion sense ran to flannel shirts over screen print t-shirts and leather jackets. Not quite punk, not quite mullet. Not quite anything at all. It would have been cool to have a wad of cash to blow on clothes but I was never smart enough to save my money.

I wasn't the nerd, I definitely wasn't cool. That's not in a "Free To Be You and Me" kind of way, I just did not fit in. I wasn't cool enough to be cool, too smart to hang with the stoners, not athletic enough to hang with the jocks and too built from lifting weights to hang with the nerds. Maybe it would have been simpler to wear a shirt that said "I fit in no category". Does that sound cool? Does that sound interesting? I promise you, you don't feel interesting or cool after listening to 30 kids laugh at you because something you said came out the wrong way. It's not fun to watch a group of kids wear a change of clothes that cost more than your entire wardrobe. Very real questions like "Why am I not together like these kids?" cross your mind and keep you up at night when you really wish for some peaceful and untroubled sleep.

Out of high school, when the jocks and kids that blew you off are now serving you at Chilis or bagging your groceries, you start to gain some perspective on the matter. The adage about kids whose lives ended after high school starts to make sense to you. Good things happen in life and you realize that you weren't watching your life pass by, you were just getting ready for the life you were going to lead. As things get better, the more and more you're convinced that you did the right thing.

But then the ebb and the flow happen. Bad things happen as they surely will-that familiar Hamlet-like introspection happens and makes you take a harsh look at where you've ended up. You stop seeing the goal at the end of the road for all the potholes that you stepped in. Nobody questions their motives or direction while things are going well. But when things go south, you again experience that long dark night of the soul where your former crimes weigh heavily upon you.

There won't be a resolution to this entry. There is no happy ending where life is concerned. There's only chapters that end mildly well and some that keep you guessing at every page.