My nephew asked me these questions about my high school experience.

My nephew (we'll call hime Da Ray Ray for the purposes of this blog) hit me up the other day asking for input on a school project. Da Ray Ray was asked by his 10th grade sociology teacher to ask the following questions of people from older generations, and then they'd compare answers to see how our high school experiences differed from his. Like I told Ray Ray, I went to Hamden High School in Hamden Connecticut from 1987-1990 after my freshman year (1986) at Hamden Hall private school. 

Answering these questions was definitely a trip down Memory Lane! It also was a wake up call how different our world is now, yet probably the same in a lot of ways. Here is what I sent Da Ray Ray, and I'd love to hear how you would have answered!

Slang words we used:
Bugging
Wigging
Ill
Fresh
Dope
Whack
Fly
Rad
Word
Def
Major
Chill
Psych
 
Rules in school:
No hats, no sports jackets, no red or blue jackets (to avoid gang problems – we had fraternities in high school which were really just gangs).
No shorts.
We couldn’t be in the halls without a pass.
 
There was no rule against us having cell phones in class – because they didn’t exist yet!
 
Respect toward parents:
We were generally respectful towards parents. We would never yell at or say bad words to our parents or anyone else’s. Growing up (far before high school) it was commonplace that any parent could discipline anyone else’s kids if they were being bad in public, including spanking or hitting.
 
We broke a lot of rules and definitely were wild and rebelled against authority, but it was behind the scenes and we treated it like a game and tried not to get caught.
 
Respect towards authority:
No one dreamed of cursing at teachers or ever fighting a teacher or anything like that. You said yes sir and no sir to police or other authority figures because we understood there were consequences to our actions. No one though they had “rights” in respect to authority and no one had a sense of entitlement.
 
During my senior year of high school, we had so many gang fights and race riots that the Guardian Angels came into the school to provide security. That was the kind of authority no one messed with, but we always tested and rebelled when we were on our own.
 
Drugs and alcohol in high school:
Most kids drank alcohol during high school.
I’d estimate that about 75% of my high school smoked weed.
LSD (acid) and psychedelic mushrooms were around but not many people did them.
There was a small amount of cocaine use but not too prevalent at all.
There was no real pill use or prescription painkiller abuse, and ecstasy and meth hadn’t even been invented yet. Crack cocaine was new in the 1980s and an epidemic in the inner cities, but I don’t remember ever seeing it in or around high school.
 
There were plenty of kids drinking in the parking lot after and even before school.
 
Can you believe that the high school had a special courtyard for all the kids who smoked cigarettes?
 
Dating:
High school kids dated plenty and it ranged from innocent crushes and hanging out to serious boyfriends and girlfriends. We had a whole lot more free time and were not supervised nearly as much as kids these days. But there was still a bit of a stigma against sex, perhaps due to religion or just conservative or traditional values. I have no way of knowing, but I’d say most kids lost their virginity in high school, though it wasn’t all crazy and so young like in schools now.
 
What you did when you hung out with friends:
After school, we would go hang out at friends’ houses, go drive around and get something to eat at a burger joint, go to the movies at night, etc. We always played basketball a ton and would play street ball outside like ¾ of the year.
 
At night or on weekends, there were a ton of parties: house parties when someone would be left home alone or we’d get a keg and carry it onto a golf course or way out by the rail road tracks and party there until the cops came to bust us and everyone ran. I had a fake driver’s license at age 15 and started going to the bars in New Haven, and was a regular at any bar or club downtown from 17 on.
 
Major world events, and how these events affect our daily life:
 
The space shuttle Challenger exploding
Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown in Russia
Iran-Contra scandal in Reagan White House
New York Stock Exchange drop on “Black Monday”
Massacre in Tiananmen Square in China (Google: Tank Man)
Nelson Mandela freed
A couple years after high school (1992) the LA Riots went down, sparked by the Rodney King video. But we’d seen the growing tension of those issues all the way back in high school.
 
But there are three big things that stood out:
 

1. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the eroding of Communism

I grew up on the tail end of the Cold War, so there was constant fear about a nuclear war with the Soviet Union (not called Russia then) that killed everyone. We really thought it was close and had drills where we had to hide under our desks in case of bombing. When the Berlin Wall fell and communist countries opened up, it signaled a new era for the world. The movies, the music, and everything else in popular culture reflected this fear.
 

1. HIV and AIDS

The AIDS epidemic started in the mid 1980s and when I was in high school, there was a lot of fear but also confusion and uncertainty. No one really had the facts on how you would get it or where it came from, though it was rumored or we knew it was prevalent in the gay communities in cities like New York and San Francisco and among heroin addicts. But getting the virus was still an automatic death sentence.
 
After high school, in 1991 Magic Johnson was diagnosed with AIDS and that was a big deal.
 

1. The rise of computers

There were very simple computers in the 1980s that allowed the simplest functions. But it was still amazing. We didn’t really know the potential or where they would go. I had a word processor (not a computer per se) even in college 1990-1995 and didn’t get my first simple computer until 1997, but already in high school 1986-1990 there were signs they were coming and going to change everything.  But people assumed it would be for work or academics, not as much home and personal computing.

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