I chose not to choose life. I chose something else.
My school seems to have lacked the hierarchical structure a lot of people are describing. I can’t remember one group shouldering the frigid cross of coolness (unless, could this mean, the cool kid was... me?)

No any sociologist studying T.P.S circa ‘95 would instead have seen a hideously mutating mélange of groups, squads, possies, gangs, mobs, friendly societies, cults and covens, all squabbling over the right to not go home in tears because someone had pushed you in a puddle and thrown your pencil case on the roof.

If you weren’t part of a clique you were a target, it was mob rule, rabid dogs have more compassion than children on a forty minute lunch break. In my second week I knew only one thing, I knew my retainer wasn’t getting thrown in the big green bins again; I had to find some friends.

My horribly rash decision one lunch time lead to me falling in with the wrong, crowd squandering my teenage years, and eventually left me alone and freezing at the side of a dirty brown lake. I was constantly feeling tench, I was on tenderhooks and wondering whether I should pike it all in.

Thats right, I chose not to choose life. I chose something else. I chose fishing. Fucking Fishing!! I spent the years between twelve and eighteen fishing!! I want that time back, I want house parties and teenage sex, I want being tricked into smoking spiffs made of lawn, I want to be able to say that I dabbled, dabbled in anything! I want a collection of pogs, I want to know the dance to the Macarena, I just want to say I’ve lived!

I haven’t picked up a rod in nearly 8 years now, but there’s still not a day goes by where I don’t think about what I’ve lost and how easy it would be to fall back into the comforting old ways.

My name's Asser and I’m a Fisherman.
(Asser, Wed 21 Jan 2009, 12:31, 4 replies)

This car insurance is driving me CRAZY!
( whenanimalsattackhumans clad in global hypercolour, Wed 21 Jan 2009, 12:43, closed)

Actually
I wouldn't say that you've missed out. "lived" is a pretty shaky thing to pin down. I daresay that if you asked you might very well find a lot of people who would have preferred fishing to the parties in retrospect.
(Poogle, Wed 21 Jan 2009, 17:22, closed)

The Petersfield School?
And the heath lake?

Or am I just trying to make your story fit (in) my hometown?
(tickles, Wed 21 Jan 2009, 21:59, closed)

You and me both, mate.
I spent my life between the ages of 9-19 in various theatres and playhouses, doing shakespeare, gilbert and sullivan, and a few local pantos as well. No wonder no-one at my school could relate to me.

Though I suppose the cute-and-simpering teenage girls who all thought that theatre was sooooo sophisticated went some way to making up for it.
(Helixdaunting, Thu 22 Jan 2009, 1:38, closed)