The prologue: The thing is—I could write a book on how much I hated my high school. “Hate” is a strong word, but I really, really, really didn’t like it.
But, I’m getting ready to enter my third decade on this godforsaken planet, so I have had some time to reflect on my experience there and grow the fuck up a little. So, even though I look back and still think that you could not pay me $1 million dollars to do it again, I have to acknowledge that I left with an amount of privilege: I grew up in a family that was always able to provide for me, with parents who supported my ambitions, with sisters who looked up to me and had to live in my shadow when I graduated in the Top 10 of the class hahahahahahahahaha.
I was able to easily get an education, bottom line, although it was often not the level of education I wanted. I got bored quickly. I’d been put into “gifted” buckets since the fourth grade. I got put into honors classes early, and when I finished them, had to take the “easy” classes anyway because there wasn’t anything else offered. The counselor literally laughed at me when I said that my dream school would have been Columbia, which, at 29 I now know was, um, ambitious for a middle-class girl who had only been offered the opportunity of (1) AP English class—but at 18? Do you know how pissed it made me that this adult in his country town “counselor” job laughed at what I wanted to do to further my education? Sorry, sir, that I didn’t want to work on my parents’ farm because also they don’t have a farm?
I had long been a city mouse stuck in the ninth circle of country mouse hell. It just reached a boiling point in high school, especially when I started, you know, also making friends from other schools that offered Russian Lit? In eleventh grade? And I had to live through the crime and punishment of a basic-ass science class because I had “maxed out” my AP classes are you kidding me?
I didn’t go to school in New York, but I went to one of the best journalism schools in the country. And when I left that tiny town and its tiny hive mind, and was able to shape my education the way I wanted, and carve out a life using my special set of skills, I found that I hated my high school les—LOL nah that place sucks.
I just needed this prologue as a PETTY WARNING, because although I was blinded by “this school suxxx” rage at 16 and also good with words, I wanted to admit that I understand now that different people want different things out of life—and I am still good with words.
So, anyway.
After this post you might think I’m a stuck-up brat, that I should just ~ get over ~ the fact that for my entire high school career, the only thing that mattered to anyone seemed to be… football.
This is my anti-heroine origin story.
The protagonist: Editor-in-Chief of the high school newspaper, newly appointed by a departed* mentor who encouraged her to continue being “assertive”; kind of a terrible tennis player (but you could not say she did not try to understand the allure of sportz); a little bit of a sarcastic bitch.
The antagonist: high school football.
Like any small school in any small Midwestern town where it takes 38 minutes to get to the nearest Target, mine worshipped high school football.
I’d never felt like I fit in there. I wasn’t popular during that time in your life when it feels like it’s important to be popular, because cow towns celebrate a certain, um, “style” as “popular,” and there was no way in cornfed hell I was going to commit to it. I wasn’t an outcast, though, because I had enough friends to fill almost two hands, and we were likeminded: too smart for the system and its limited resources/efforts for kids who actually liked learning; too goody-two-shoes to be outwardly vocal about it; too underdeveloped in our teenaged brains to express how the lack of educational stimulation stunted us, our peers and is continuing to fail every kid with potential who finds themselves trapped in those red, blue and gray walls.
Go Falcons!
But I’ll admit it: I have been to a high school football game.
I had a loyalty to the marching band — my friends were in it, and so was my high school boyfriend. I viewed football games as a way to spend time with friends before we could drive, and more reluctantly after we could drive. But when you live in the middle of nowhere and it takes literal hours to get places, you may as well hang out at a f**tb*ll g*m* looking Very Cool and Aloof during half-time by the concession stand.
I still don’t know the rules of football, except that why bother because it’s dumb? I went to the games, but I did not watch the games. Instead, I watched boys with hair like Zac Efron in “High School Musical” play “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” on their acoustic guitars behind the bleachers.**
Even so, I didn’t always hate football, specifically. And it was actually trying to be a Sport Person that made me hate hate hate hate hate this particular sport.
Maybe there wasn’t one incident that set me off, but I remember being at a pep rally (one of the 3249686 we had every week), where I had been told that all of the sports teams were supposed to be called out. I had to sit with the tennis team so we could stand up and people could pretend to be interested in girls’ tennis for seven seconds.***
But, hmm.
Conveniently, the pep rally “ended” before the girls’ tennis team could get the claps…but not after the football team got multiple rounds of applause. Even the freaking JV team, which, I’m sorry, you play JV on a football team for a school that couldn’t even separate its cafeteria from its auditorium so we all ate in the “auditoria,” but, yeah, congrats on sitting on the bench for 14 hours or however long football games last!
And, also, okay — I did not JOIN a SPORTS TEAM to not get ACKNOWLEDGED for it.
After that, I started really listening to the announcements in the mornings after our games, in the afternoons before our games. We were hardly mentioned, especially if the two good players on the team didn’t have a good night.
But, HMMMM.
The football team was mentioned every day.
I knew we weren’t the only team that got shit on. We had a bowling team that I only knew existed because I heard about it once and it made me think of “Alley Cats Strike.” We had a golf team, and I have no idea where they practiced… can you golf in a cornfield? (Not being sassy here, I am genuinely curious?) We had girls’ and boys’ soccer, and as a Red School in ‘Merica, you can imagine the enthusiasm there. Our softball team got the shaft, for sure, because — duh! — it was a girls’ team! Baseball usually did okay, because it was during football’s off-season and a lot of the same doofuses who played football played baseball, and it was coached by the same “teachers.”
But, HMmmMMMmmMMM.
The football team was the crowning glory. Every year I was there, it was, “the football team can make it to State” and, “the football team will definitely make it to State” and then, “this school with more money and possibly actually talented student athletes beat us, so we’re not going to State.”
Don’t worry, we had a pep rally to celebrate these losers’ efforts anyway.
I mean, to be fair, not everyone on the football team was The Worst. But a lot of them floated by because the “teachers” who coached liked them, and cared more about getting the team to Almost State than actual education.
Never mind the team was full of bullies. Never mind one of the head coaches liked to place his hand on 16 year-old girls’ backs as he was “answering” their “questions.” Never mind another coach, a humongous man and literal full-grown adult, took it upon himself to verbally freak out on my boyfriend in front of the entire class and attempt to get him in trouble when he said something sarcastic about their stupid-looking jerseys.
Never mind the kids who didn’t play football, who wanted to write, or do something with science beyond memorizing the periodic table for two weeks, or produce musicals, or dreamt of art school, or wanted an actual academic fucking challenge.
So, after trying my hand at beating this shit at its own game (sports) and feeling something deep and petty grow inside me knowing nothing would change the score (with this school’s love for sports)—I decided to make a racket.****
I wrote an op-ed.
Editors note: Because it was written before the creation of the Cloud, this particular essay is no longer with us. But don’t worry, for some reason the protagonist in this story decided to keep a copy of a paper she wrote in tenth grade about how emotionally abusive Bella & Edward’s entire relationship is, and also a five-paragraph essay about “Sk8r Boi” from eighth grade. Do you know how difficult it is to write enough sentences to fill five paragraphs about “Sk8r Boi”? It takes a SCHOLAR. You can trust this narrative, is what I’m saying.
In this o-pin-ion piece, I called out the teachers (not by name are you insane?) who gave these boys a pass when it came to absenses, behavior, general dumbassery. I called out our pep rallies, which always used football as a focal point. I asked why we couldn’t have separate pep rallies of appreciation for the other sports teams if we were going to use every second of the currently scheduled ones for just one team? Please? I called out our morning announcements, our afternoon announcements, our apparently incessant need to repeatedly remind everyone within four neighboring cornfields that we “might get to State” but that we * checks notes * did not get to State. I gave a holla to my fellow underdogs, the golfers and the bowlers and even boys’ tennis because aren’t all sportsmen created equal?
I essentially Hamilton-ed the shit out of this thing.
Up until this blog post, that op-ed was probably the pettiest shit I had ever written and, ladies and gentlemen… the petty is delicious.
Even after I handed in my hard copy because we didn’t have student emails back then, I didn’t think it would do what it did. My advisor never expressed any concerns of EXPLOSIVE DRAMA and we all knew nobody read the paper anyway because there were only, like, 500 people total in the high school and they were too busy listening to all the announcements about the football team.
It turns out I started a bit of a dumpster fire.
We started selling the papers in the morning, and by my almost-lunch Personal Finance class, I had already passed multiple people in multiple hallways who I had suspected were talking about it, but it was hard to tell because most of the school only had conversations with the words “football” in it in the first place.
There was a girl in my Personal Finance class who was my Class Friend. You know the kind: you’re not in each others’ immediate friend circles, but maybe you have some peripheral friends who overlap. Your Real Friends aren’t in the class with you, maybe because they are all in Band at this same time, so you panic hard when you have to partner up for a project and zero in on the least-worst choice. You’re Class Friends!
She was a year older than me, and much cooler in that she was wearing black eyeliner before the general population and had fresh emo highlights. We would have never been IRL friends, but we shared a kindred spirit: Too Sarcastic and Too Smart for this stupid required class.
She had a copy of the paper on her desk that day, and when we were all settled and supposed to be doing our “work” on “personal finances” for our “future,” she tapped me with a pencil.
“Hey. I heard you wrote this.”
I hesitated for a second, because holy shit, this was confrontation. But I decided to push the boundaries of Class Friend trust. I thought I knew the kind of people she’d spread the gossip to, and trust me, neither of us were ever going to give a fuck about what a football player thought.
So I said, “Yeah.” And then, because I am a Straight-A Student and Good Girl to my goddamn core, I panicked and added: “Please don’t tell anyone.”
And she said, “You should know the whole marching band was talking about it and we all think it’s really fucking cool that someone finally said it.”
I was beaming at my Best Class Friend.
Later, my favorite English teacher called me up to her desk before class. She’s someone I consider to be one of the best mentors I’ve ever had. She’s an excellent teacher. The type who wants to see kids succeed, who will bend over backward to help do it, which in such a small school in a poor county is a triumph and a half. She constantly encouraged me, gave me constructive criticism, hung up my work on her wall—the ultimate way to secure permanent Coletta adoration. She was one of the good ones, the only good ones… and she’s married to a football coach.
That day, even though the byline said Anonymous, and I had been careful about the use of hyphenated adjectives that she was always calling me out on, she looked at me like she knew exactly who had written that sassy stuff about the football team.
“I’m not going to ask you if this is you,” is basically what she said, and I was sweating with did-I-disappoint-my-beloved-authority-figure anxiety, but I gave her a nod.
And she said, “I’m proud of you for expressing your opinion.”
PROUD? WHAT! Not massively disappointed, not upset that (let’s be real) my shade also extended to her husband, not an ounce of “you’re just a teenager shut up” in her voice.
PROUD.
I don’t want to pass judgement on anyone’s relationship, in this judgmental post about stupid football. but looking back now, I can empathize with what I imagine is a strain that coaching puts on a relationship. (I’ve obviously never watched “Friday Night Lights,” give me a fucking break.) She had two kids at the time, and a husband who spent a lot of time with 50 (how many people are on a football team?) other kids. She also taught the only “higher level” English classes offered at that school, so she knew the students who wanted more challenging work, who wanted to keep educating themselves long after the last pep rally.
She probably read that op-ed and knew. Because if you know you know.
After a total of (2) compliments, I was totally drunk off power.
This feeling… this was different than the time I didn’t write a poem about the popular girls. This time, I wrote something to piss somebody off on purpose.
And it was working..
Because later still, our fearless newspaper advisor told me that the handsy “teacher” coach had cornered her in the hallway, demanding to know who wrote these mean words that had hurt his man pride.
She’d told him the whole point of an anonymous op-ed was that it was allowed to be anonymous. And then she told him, yes, even at a high school paper.
She wasn’t afraid of the Boys Club who thought they ruled the second-floor hallway, and after that, neither was I. She had said it kind of lightheartedly to me, a little “can you believe this guy?!” because that’s who she was. She was another Strong Female Lead in my journey to Piss Off the (Football) Patriarchy, who stood up for students and recognized the lack of care and attention they would get from home, from other teachers. She had a big heart and a big laugh and she was stubborn, so hell yeah we were pulling the “media ethics” card on this shit.
I don’t think she knew how much it meant to me that she stood up for me. Because that football coach teacher was clearly agitated that day, and managed to not look at me one single time when I sat in his class acing his stupid vocabulary test.
I can’t help but believe it’s because she protected me and my opinion. My freedom of speech.
I got a few random high fives from people in the marching band, but no one else directly confronted me about it, other than my friends. Through them I learned word had spread and rumor had it a certain rhymes with witch had written an op-ed.
I wish I could say they abolished football. That they stopped returfing (?) the turf every year and instead put that money toward remodeling the library, investing in these things called personal laptops or helping students become more prepared for the standardized tests that would determine their future.
But in the end, it didn’t cause a revolution. I didn’t get a compromise out of it, an amendment. Football went on. We still didn’t make it to State either of the next two years. I still had to sit through classes taught by small-minded small-town men with a small list of priorities (football).
I cut ties with that place hard when I left, after my reign as Editoress in Chief of the M*ssie Quarterly and my 4.5 or something GPA got me a secure spot in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism. I didn’t stand for the stupid wave at graduation, I didn’t toss my cap. I cried with my three best friends and thanked maybe two teachers, and that was it.
See you guys at the reunion, NOT.
And as for the football team… half those dudes still live in that town, not playing football. More than half those dudes didn’t even go to college to study, I mean, play football. So why, exactly, did we spend every waking second we weren’t watching “Forrest Gump” as an excuse to learn about the Vietnam War (a real thing on a real “lesson plan” of a real “teacher”) worshipping the ground these manchildren walked on like this was their predetermined path in life? Why did we spend hours of every week applauding their so-so job at failing to go to State, instead of encouraging students to go see the musical, to go support the tiny, tiny art shows, to catch a girls’ tennis home game?
I’ve heard not much has changed.
A few of the same sexist men are still “teaching” during the daytime hours when they can’t legally be coaching football, or something.
The school district is a mess. What little educational acclaim it had left took a total nosedive right as the youngest Coletta was getting the hell out of there. I imagine COVID-19 will fuck them up greatly, because now they have to teach the coach teachers how to actually teach when all the fall sports get cancelled.
I don’t even know if there’s a school paper anymore.
But. Hmm.
Two years later, my sister Emily had a weird experience with the football coach in charge of “teaching” teenagers American history. He accused her and a friend of some random bullying. They were A+ students, quiet, drama-free. She was super upset about it, and couldn’t figure out why it had blown so out of proportion. The whole thing was strange. He didn’t seem to have all the facts, but I guess he had the important one: her last name was Coletta.
And then.
Ten years after I wrote an anonymous opinion column in a high school newspaper that cost 25 cents, my sister Kayley had my old English teacher’s football coach husband for eighth grade, um, science, and he had a question for her.
“Does your sister still hate football?”
!!!!!!!!!!
I mean, oh my god—ten years. TEN YEARS? It feels so good to know that a bored, words-inclined 16-year old wrote something that will trigger grown-ass men into infinity.
I beat them at their own stupid game, because now they can’t think of their stupid game without thinking about the people who think their game is stupid.
Who lives, who dies, who tells your fucking story.
The epilogue: No one can convince me that football is good. That football is fun. That football is worth trying to intimidate a teenager because you got mad. That football is worth placing an entire school’s literal budget and metaphorical worth on.
I was a liberal arts brat hungry for learning and growth at a school that didn’t give two shits about being consistent with the hyphen in their freaking name half the time, let alone fostering creativity or putting money toward anything that couldn’t get them a (participation) trophy.
But, look. I get that football means something to some people in a positive way. (Will I even make it through this paragraph.) I have family who likes football (jesus) and friends who like football (JESUS) and a fiancé who likes Cleveland football (JEEEESUUUUS.) And I guess some people, for whatever reason, just enjoy watching large men throwing themselves at each other until they get brain damage.
So, if you enjoy professional football or * ENORMOUS SIGH * college football or high school foo—-actually no, why are you still going to your high school? That’s weird.
BUT IF YOU LIKE FOOTBALL…….fine, okay?
Fine.
….and that is what I believe they call scoring a touchdown for personal growth.
——————-
*She’s not dead, she just ditched that teaching job as fast as she could. At the time, my newspaper friends and I were heartbroken, betrayed. But years later, as soon as we graduated and escaped the curse of that place, we were like…..oh.
**I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW OKAY SUE ME.
***Listen, in the name of journalistic (blog?) integrity, it must be noted that I was… so bad… at tennis. I wanted to be good, or at least okay. I thought it would be fun to try on the personality of Sporty Spice who is cute sweating in her tennis skirt but uhh this was not that. This was fucking practice at 7 a.m. in the summer, SO MUCH RUNNING, SO MUCH SWEATING, my curly hair getting bigger every waking second, LITERALLY YELLOWING ANCIENT “WHITE” POLOS with SKORTS, hours-long drives to away games because our stupid school was 349066906790 miles away from civilization, and also I am NOT coordinated or emotionally steely enough to handle team dynamics or bad doubles partners. I did the ladies a solid and dedicated my entire soul to the newspaper and the yearbook after two years of rolling my eyes at my opponents.
****She got sports jokes!
*****Just wait until we deep dive into the “debates” he used to make the class have about whether gay people should be allowed to get married, or if women could ever be president because — ruh oh! — these bitches menstruate.
hi, i’m holly. 