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Freaks And Geeks – Commentary Lesson

Hi, this is Kristin. Welcome back to the commentary for the conversation this month which is Freaks and Geeks. So this conversation got me thinking about how I would tell you about my group of friends in high school. If you remember in the conversation I had said that I could relate to the main character in the TV series, Freaks and Geeks, because she was changing from one group of friends to another and I had some similarities, not completely but some.

So when I started high school, I was in ninth grade and 14 years old, or actually 13 maybe. Anyway, I had a small group of friends, as I mentioned in the conversation. But, y’know, high school, suddenly I’m around a lot of new people that I’d not been around before, y’know, people who are much older even, like three years older.

So me and my friends, at about the same time, we started to explore a little bit. And we started spending more and more time with what would be considered, like in the TV series, Freaks and Geeks, they were kind of the freaks or the burnouts. Although we didn’t…they weren’t called that at my school. In fact, I don’t really remember if they had a name.

Some of there were, their style was punk, so they would shave their heads bald and wear a lot of black. I can’t remember what all, but they had some similar characteristics as the freaks in the TV show, Freaks and Geeks. So, for example, they might not go to class or they might not go to school at all for the day.

And I would find myself outside with them, maybe smoking cigarettes and, y’know, they enjoyed having parties and where there was always alcohol if they could get it.

And so this is…these are the, this is the group that me and my small group of friends, all girlfriends, we started slowly spending more and more time with this group and my mom was actually an English teacher at my high school. So this made for a difficult situation because she first of all had some of these kids from this group I was starting to spend more time with, she had had them in class and a lot…many times she didn’t necessarily like them and they didn’t like her.

But I don’t think she really was…I don’t think she liked the idea of me starting to spend more time with this group, for many reasons. Probably one of the main reasons though was that she was concerned that other teachers would see me spending time with them and it would reflect badly on my mom, or look, she felt would look bad for her.

About this time, I started spending more time with them. Actually when I started high school I had a boyfriend who was one year older than me but he was a jock. And jock, that’s another group. So jocks are people who play sports. So he was a basketball player and a baseball player. But when I started high school I’d been dating him already for about two years and I started to slowly love interest in him as I was changing and me and my friends were starting to hang around more of the punk burnout crowd.

And as I’m losing interest in him and becoming more interested in this new group of friends, he was losing interest in me as well. So we were just becoming very different people and we stopped dating. And I started changing the way I dressed. I had gone to a secondhand clothing store, secondhand meaning the clothes were used, and I’d found this old trench coat.

So a trench coat is a really long coat and it was kind of a dark brown color. And I took black paint and painted a circle with an A in it which means anarchy, anarchy meaning chaos. And that was a cool symbol for this group of my new friends. So I put that on the back of this jacket and it was…it was old like I said because it was used. So it was kind of torn in some areas and didn’t look very nice.

My mom hated that coat and she told me I couldn’t wear it to school so what I would do is I would keep it in my locker. So I wouldn’t take it home so she, y’know, she wouldn’t see me wearing it. So I would leave it in my locker and I would put it on when I got to school. And, of course, I knew where her room was so if I was…I would just avoid walking past her room so she wouldn’t seem me wearing it at school. I think maybe she saw me once or twice and got really angry at me.

But, yeah, so I started changing the way I dressed. I started shaving my head bald and spiking my hair up punk style and just wearing like, I remember I was wearing earrings that had skulls in them. Oh that was something else. I only had my ears pierced, one on each side, so I had two piercings. And I wanted to pierce my ears more and my mom wouldn’t let me.

So because she wouldn’t let me and I couldn’t drive yet, she would not take me somewhere to have it professionally done so I decided to do it on my own. So one night in my bedroom I took a safety pin, really sharp, pointed, almost like a needle, and I put ice on it, and ice…or sorry, I cleaned it and put ice on my ear to numb my ear to make my ear so I couldn’t feel. And I actually pierced my own ears then. I put in three on my left ear and one more on my right. And I still have these.

And the funny thing is when I bought earrings…after I pierced them, I bought earrings and I put them in the holes and I didn’t say anything. And I don’t remember how soon it was before my mom noticed. She didn’t make me take them out. I think she just kind of shook her head like, “You crazy girl.” But I got to keep them in and like I said to this day, I still have those piercings. I still have, not the same earrings obviously, but the holes from when I was 14 or 15 years old.

So one interesting…another interesting thing, starting to hang around this new group, was, like I said, some of them had had my mom as a teacher and some of them didn’t like her. So I’d have to constantly hear about what a bitch she was. And if you remember, that word was in the conversation. It’s not a very nice word for a woman or a girl.

So that was kind of hard for me. I’d just sit there and, y’know, I’m in high school, just kind of smile and act like, okay, no big deal. And then, as I said, also my mom didn’t like a lot of these people I was hanging around with. In general, I would say, it was difficult having my mom there as a teacher at my high school.

In fact, my very first year, my freshman year, that’s what we call…freshman year is your first year of high school, ninth grade, I actually had to have her as a teacher.

I needed to take this particular English class that she was teaching and there was no way for me to be able to take it at a later time with another teacher. So as much as she didn’t want to teach me and I didn’t want to have her as a teacher, it was…we couldn’t avoid it. We couldn’t not…we couldn’t stop the situation.

And it’s interesting because I have an older brother and a younger brother and neither of them ended up having her. She was able to avoid the situation with them but not with me. So I had her for one class and there was this one guy, I remember, who sat behind me for most of her class, because we had assigned seats. Y’know, she put us in certain seats.

And this one guy, his name was Scott, he sat there. He did not like my mom. She was a very hard teacher, very tough. Her classes were very difficult. And he sat there for most of that semester, most of that time, it was half of the school year, complaining about my mom. So he’s sitting right behind me and he was constantly saying “Bitch, bitch, she’s such a bitch.” And I had to listen to this.

And for the longest time, I thought I can’t believe he’s saying these things knowing she’s my mother, and it turns out he didn’t realize. He actually…towards the end of the semester he realized somehow she was my mother and he actually apologized to me. So, yeah, things like that were not very…it was not very easy having my mom as a teacher and also just teaching at my high school.

So anyway, going back to different groups or cliques, what kind of clique were you in in high school, if you were in one at all? Were there cliques at your high school? Are there cliques now in your life? As AJ mentioned in the conversation, he talks about how he sees some cliques here in San Francisco with adults. So are there any cliques with people you’re involved with at work or whatever, y’know, your friends? Share with us on the Ning site, let us know.

Alright, this concludes the commentary for the conversation Freaks and Geeks. Have a good month and I’ll see you next month. Bye-bye.