how times have changed
woke up today groggy-eyed at 6:45 am, the good sister that i am, to drive my brother to our high school. registration for class changes happened at 8:30 am, so, being the very diligent and hardcore asian kids that we are, alvin and i headed over to the gym to try and be first in line so he could obtain the grand prize of...chem AP. yes, i kid you not. the school is so saturated with science-hungry asian mothers propping up their children like nerdalicious puppets that getting two science AP classes is actually considered a treat.
not going to bore you with details/snide subliminal complaints about my most dearest alma mater - if you want to read what the wall street journal has to say about us, you can read it here.
anyway, i pulled up to the parking lot only to discover, lo and behold, we were not even the first ones there! a full ten kids stood in front of us in line (at which point alvin coughed under his breath "*cough*mit*cough*." lol, sorry guys, jp, jp...) interesting study on the ten people that actually came before us:
first and second in line: your typical nerdy chinese kids (YES!!!), this time, two girls, complete with tapered-leg jeans and all (tucked...tucked, into their oh-so-very white socks...god, people actually do that outside of movies?) holding...yes, SAT vocab flash cards. i repeat, they were holding SAT vocab flash cards while waiting in line for several hours just to switch into more AP science classes.
third in line: a slightly chubby, unshaven chinese kid obviously at the top of the food chain of cool, who kept on loudly saying "yes, i got here at 4:30 am! i seriously did! i would have been first except the guard wouldn't open the gate cuz it was 4:30." good for you, johnny. and then:
"oh my god, i'm reading this philosopher right. i'm reading this book. it's PHILOSOPHY. P-H-I-L-O-S-O-P-H-Y. he keeps on writing about like, erotica and stuff. HEHE...erotica. HEHE. like omg, he talks about erotica."
fourth-sixth in line: posse of scarily hardcore indian girls, with the stereotypical curly, unbrushed hair and kmart clothes, who kept on talking about how hardcore they were. then they proceeded to talk to the Freakishly Skinny Jewish Girl (see below) about "dude, all these parties that i'm gonna throw...haha cuz i pretend that i actually have a life."
seventh in line: freakishly skinny jewish girl with delicate features, extremely put together and wearing...clothes weirdly stylish for cali, but kind of seventies style. makeup/straight-permed hair to put regina george to shame. oh, and heels. alvin said she was "very ambitious." i believed him. that's girl's heading for my next alma mater. she later cut the slightly chubby chinese guy and became third in line.
and of course, the requisite short spiky-haired little buff asian kid in aviators who looks like his dad's part of the mafia and his huge, slightly dull-looking football crony cuts behind us (my brother's partially to blame, he lets them in with a small shrug, mentioning how much the tall guy can bench press.) it's sad right? the pecking order of musculature? (alvin: "it's darwin, je. darwin.") shortly after the little spiky kid (i shall name him Porcupine, after one of my favourite animals of all time) cut, he let in pretty much the entire football team, and the small asian kids behind him could not do a thing about it. prompted by my superior position of old age, i was tempted to say something, except my brother advised against it: i can only bench the bar.
so, two oh-so-very-long hours later, the doors swung open and revealed...another line. after getting a ticket, the kids were told to go to the main office for schedule changes where yes, there was one more line. a screening process in which a very irate vice principal that just wanted to get out of there called the kids up one by one and yelled and them/explained why the school doesn't actually care about their educations, just wants to save themselves as much trouble as they possibly can. then he gave them a second ticket, so they could...yes, wait in line again! can you believe it? one by one they were then called into the office and yes, discouraged once again for trying to challenge themselves (and thus waste the school's precious resources).
oh, god bless Monta Vista.
anyway, i don't really have a point (other than ranting and probably offending you with my rank midmorning humour) except that i have never been so glad to be out of there. high school had fun times, high times, low times, stressful times mostly, and some very trying growing times, but college did too...and now that i've graduated from both, i've finally figurd out that the college experience is so much more real. more intense, less posing, more complex, less BS. when the shit hits the fan, you'd better clean it up. (by the way, where does "shit hit the fan" even come from? never mind...don't answer that.)
staring out at the sea of young, young faces, some acne-matted, some intelligent, some caked in make-up, some frighteningly ambitious, some filled with pot-induced stupor, some with mouth perpetually wide open, some perpetually silent, you feel old...not old in a superior way necessarily, nor old in a bad way, but old in a relieved way. it all comes together later...these pieces of self that are so fragmented by the identity-seeking trials of postadolesence, united only by insecurity. maybe for some, it came together during the high school years (don't some people say those are the best four years of your life?), but for others (myself included)...honestly, the best was yet to come.
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an aside...omfg, i have lactose intolerance hardcore! in the past few days i've dropped maybe 4-5 lbs in pure waterweight (i'll leave it up to your imagination as to how my body accomplished that) and now my stomach is horrendendously bloated, 24-7. so pissed right now. my love of milk is unparalleled. guess my lactase genes didn't go the way of my alcohol dehydrogenase genes, and succumbed to their innate asian-ness....aRG.
eternal appreciation from me in the form of cookies if you want to venture out to the bay and come visit? they won't be as good as the ones in my roommate's care package but i try...i try. 
whooo Unfaithful!!
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