I was an unusual kid

I was just reminiscing about something from high school. I hadn't thought about it in years. I had almost forgotten it. Now that I remembered it, I realize what an unusual thing it was that I did. What's unusual is actually more of my mindset than my actions, but those were strange too.

Here's the setup: I was a mathlete in high school, and proud of it. In fact, that's really the only sort of mathlete you can be. It's such a ridiculous name and so nerdy that unless you wear it like a badge of honor, it pretty much has to be a badge of shame. So I was fortunate to have taken to it so vehemently. I even advertised for the mathletes and went recruiting. I remember hanging up posters around school. Mr. Schwing, the teacher in charge of the mathletes, probably didn't appreciate it much. He was a pretty reserved guy. I guess he's one of those inexplicably shy teachers. He was a bit of a grump too, but in a good natured way. After my recruiting when a hoard (and by hoard I mean about 9. But to give you some perspective, sometimes the mathletes were just Mr. Schwing and me) of mediocre students (by mediocre I mean they might have been getting As and struggling to do so, or they might have had Bs. Either way, Mr. Schwing hadn't recruited them himself, which was what he usually did. If someone was a particularly strong student, he just asked them to join.) stopped by, Mr. Schwing didn't know what to do with the small crowd of students who had never seen these types of problems before and didn't know how to handle them or struggle with them. The mathlete problems were pretty crazy. I think Mr. Schwing was glad when there were fewer of them the next week and fewer the week after that. That was a little surprising since we could barely scrape together enough students to form a legal team for a time. Eventually, by my senior year, we had enough popularity to have enough regulars to not only form a team, but also have a few extras.

In any event, that tells you a little about Mr. Schwing and the status of the Mathletes. So here's the situation I was remembering. During my senior year, Mr. Schwing happened to miss the last Mathlete tournament. I forget what sort of appointment he had (I probably never knew- he wasn't the sort to share), but he couldn't be there. I remember getting quite mock offended, in part because I was actually going to miss him. I remember joking around with some of my fellow Mathletes and a few others that we should leave a threatening note or something for Mr. Schwing because he missed the last meet. I remember mentioning how angry notes are always thrown through windows attached to bricks (I believe even as a high school kid I realized that this is not exactly a common practice, but high school kids in general, and me especially, love a little melodrama). Of course, I didn't want to go around breaking any windows. I wasn't a vandal or anything. But one of my friends did happen to have a spare brick. So I wrote a note (typed) and then painstakingly went through changing the font of each letter so it looked like one of those ransom notes cut out of a magazine (someone later told me there's a font called ransom that does that for you. Oh well. Mine had more soul.). Then I went into the front office with my letter and my brick and asked if someone at the front desk would unlock Mr. Schwing's room so that I could place it on his desk. The secretary thought it was funny and knew me well enough that she didn't mind unlocking it for me, so the letter and brick were successfully placed on his chair.

Mr. Schwing never commented upon the threatening note as I recall. It wasn't the sort of thing he would comment on. He was pretty reserved. We did get a comment out of him one time we surrounded his car with caution tape and made a chalk outline of my body by the car. Someone also left the message in chalk "She's in the trunk." He later commented that he actually looked to make sure. But that's about it. He really was not that interested in our antics. I don't think it bothered him, but I also don't think he cared.

In reliving a few of my past escapades, I kind of got off topic. The point I was originally going for, is that my students don't do things like that. It's not that Mr. Schwing was the kind of guy who made you feel comfortable doing stuff like that. No one had done anything of that ilk before and I would be surprised to hear of anyone behaving that way since. I was just an unusual kid. I don't think I realized how strange I was until recently when I was thinking about my own students. I knew at the time that it was not ordinary, but all my friends would always participate with me, and it's not like they were solely my own ideas. Someone else provided the caution tape. I just was the one who wanted to use it, and who wouldn't have thought twice about using it.

So I guess I was pretty strange, but something else strikes me as I think about it. That sort of spontaneous mischief is also kind of hipster-y. Was I a secret hipster before I even knew what the word was? One or two of my cooler friends from that crowd became kind of hipster-y themselves when they entered college, as opposed to me who became more of a grump. I'm a pretty cheery grump, as grumps go, though.

There's not much of a point to this blog, but I have to say I am surprised by how much I've changed. I just don't do stuff like that anymore, and I certainly don't lead the way. If anything, I'm the one telling people "don't throw rotten pumpkins at CZ" or something like that. Maybe I changed because I like to be one the extremes of any metric, and I just don't think I have it in me to be extremely hipster-y. I do, however, have it in me to be extremely grumpy. Or maybe I was never much of a hipster- my clothing has never been very edgy (a product of growing up in the 90s no doubt). But I have to say I do enjoy hipster music...

Well I think that settles it. I think I kind of like hipster ideals- the sort of things hipsters are going for. But I still don't like hipsters themselves. Grump grump grump.