New Orleans: Where The High School Years Never End

I'm sure some of you have expressed the following sentiment, "..oh god, high school was the worst time of my life."  Either you had bad hair, wore bad clothes, had bad skin, drove a bad car or, if you were me, all of the above.   What I mean to say is: It is a truth universally acknowledged that high school sucks, and is something you might talk about when being occasionally nostalgic, but not something you really ever think about unless you are in an awkward hotel ballroom with an open bar at a reunion.  But I am beginning to realize that in New Orleans, your K-12 education, for whatever reason, defines you more than any undergraduate, graduate, or post-graduate work does. 



I first started to realize that this was true when I started spending appreciable time here, and people would ask me, "Where did you go to school?" I would very quickly offer up my undergraduate school and my law school.  But these answers were always unacceptable to the questioner, and they would repeat themselves and say, "NO...where did you go to school?" like those other forms of education did not matter at all. Oh yes, all the education I needed in life was my Sophomore English teacher's classroom lesson on Julius Caesar, where she separated the class into the "smart, pretty people" and the "stupid, ugly people." It goes without saying that I somehow found myself in the latter group. I digress. Sadly, in New Orleans, SO many people define themselves by what they did 10-20 years ago.  People at bars have literally said things to me like, "Listen, I'm not saying I'm a big deal, but I was on the football team at John Curtis when we went to state." AMAZING.  You played on a successful high school football...like....15years and 40lbs ago.  Really impressive stuff.  Let's call up the MacArthur foundation. 


But the other problem with New Orleanians' obsession with high school/early childhood education is that because people are SO obsessed with this finite period in their life, if they never leave here (even if only for a month or a summer or something), they stay exactly the same as they were in high school. 

Nowhere is this more obvious than the prestigious New Orleans nightlife destination F&M's Patio Bar.  I had the (pleasure?) of going there last night at the request of an old friend.  As soon as I walked in I was bombarded with linen, polo, khaki (which I literally can't even spell), and Journey.  Now my law school friends will start balking at this, and say, "Layne - you live for scenes like this." Yes, I do.  But somehow those things + the aroma and F&M's + the New Orleans summer heat transformed me back to the metaphorical high school cafeteria.  


Sidebar: it might be hard for you to imagine, knowing how well adjusted, popular, and beloved as I am now (said in an obviously sarcastic Liz Lemon voice)...but I was a weird kid growing up.  I was a combination of all the things which were like chum in the shark infested waters of private schooling; bad at sports, easily homesick when spending the night out at peoples' houses, and really into choir.  Also adding to the problem, my parents subscribed to the, "treat your child like an adult" parenting philosophy, so I would entertain myself by doing things like: creating a Hurricane Preparedness Packet, which I made my mom send to weatherman Bob Breck (age 10),  playing a "prank" on my parents by running into their room saying, "THE IRS IS HERE WITH POLICE CARS" (age 11), writing a one act play about New Orleans political corruption set in a Melrose Place type apartment complex which ended in an apocalyptic fire (titled: New Orleans Stories, age 12) and the list could literally go on, and on, and on. 

Now, where were we? Oh right.  F&M's.  So, as soon as I walked into F&Ms, I was immediately transported back to my insecure, standing-in-front-of-the-gates-at-McGehee-School-Crying-Self.  I almost bolted right back out the door to hail a cab back to the safety of my house.  "NO!" I told myself, "You are a mother f-ing JURIS DOCTOR. Half of these people are under the age of 18, and the other half probably are on their 7th victory lap at LSU.  You have nothing to prove to anyone." So I proudly walked into the bar and found my friend.  

The night was going fine until I got up to get some water from the bar.  As I was walking back to my table, some jagweed in a tan suit standing slapped my arm, and said, "HEY GIRL."  I looked skeptically at him and then said, "Hello" in a very curt voice and walked away.  As I was walking away, I noticed he and the rest of his party had erupted in laughter and were looking back at me and laughing.  What. The. Eff.  I could feel myself slowly regressing to my childhood persona.  My 10year old self wanted to start crying.  But then I started in with my affirmations (JD, lived in 5 cities that weren't New Orleans, less frizzy hair, etc), and I regained my composure. Of course, I took too long compiling the list of come-backs in my head that I was going to hurl at him before he and his posse walked away, so I never got a chance to confront him.  BUT, if I were to see him again, I'd want to say this: you think its funny to laugh at girls? Yeah, you're a big man, aren't you.  FYI: your suit is too small, it has become translucent with sweat, and I don't know if Mr. Perlis himself can get out that beer stain on your jacket. 


But here is where rubber meets road: in any other city, the mean and cruel popular kids from your childhood usually have some sort of comeuppance, and are slapped down to their proper place in life, and the nerds get to rule adulthood. Let's be real: it's a former-nerd-a-palooza at all graduate schools. The quiet kid who never left the library in 10th grade? I saw him doing a keg-stand in Bacardi Plaza last semester.  We let the mean populars have adolescence, and now, it's our turn.  But in New Orleans, because high school never ends, the rightful world order is never restored.  The mean popular people are fairly successful.  I am envious of the texts I get from my college/law school friends who text  me and say, "OMG, this guy who once made me cry by calling me bigfoot in 7th grade just asked me if I wanted fries with that." I end up sending texts like, "this guy who once refused to dance with me at the awkward 6th grade ballroom dancing lessons my mom forced me to go to just bought $200 worth of groceries while I was buying one bag of off-brand potato chips with nickels."  Maybe I should accept fate.  I had my quasi-popular years (..relatively speaking..), but now that I'm back in New Orleans, I just need to go ahead and buy some scrunchies, a teddy bear backpack, and start making power point presentations again for fun on the weekends.