High School Memories, take 1

I had a music appreciation class my senior year where we studied all the classic composers. It was in that class that I developed an obsession with Mozart and his music. I liked most of the others but there was something about Mozart's music that just appealed to me on a different level from anyone else. Mrs. Friborg showed us the film "Amadeus" in that class. I had never seen it but was instantly hooked and ended up watching it about 100 times and memorizing all the lines. It remains to this day one of my all time top 5 movies. Years later I had a chance to spend a weekend in Salzburg, Austria (Mozart's birthplace) and it was unbelievable. The entire city is a shrine to him. There was a girl in my class named Robyn Oster, she had trouble with osme of the composer's names for some reason and the one that is sticks in my mind is Bach; for some reason, she could not say his name correctly. She pronounced it "Bark". Both Robyn and I were addicts of the soap opera One Life to Live which came on every afternoon at 2pm. We were stuck in class until 2:19pm so we had to miss the first half hour so for some reason we developed a strange tradition - every day when the clock hit 2pm, we would look at each other and hit our desks three times to symbolize the last three notes of the OLTL theme song ("cause we only have one lift to live...bum bum bum!"). God, the things you remember. Robyn is now a professional singer in Las Vegas.

I was a big soccer player growing up and at the risk of sounding immodest, I was really good. I played for the JV team my sophomore year but since I was from a different town the coach did not know me and stuck me at left wing all year which is a very unnatural position for me. I ended up only scoring one goal since the coach would only allow me to cross the ball and never shoot. not only that but I kind of felt like an outsider since I was from a different town than everyone else on the team. It really left a bad taste in my mouth and I didn't bother playing junior year. But I missed it so bad and had made friends with a few other guys who played by then so I had planned to play senior year no matter what. But fate had other plans. Going into senior year I had a job as a video store clerk but I had planned on quitting when soccer season started. Unfortunately I had a car that I had to pay for, then senior pictures (which were over 200 bucks), then prom tickets, not to mention college less than a year away and all of a sudden I realized that I couldn't quit my job. I lived in a one parent home and my mother worked to make ends meet so I didn't have the luxury of just asking my parents for the money for stuff I needed. In the end I made the heartbreaking decision to forego playing my senior year in order to be able to pay for the stuff I needed. It was tough and the coach made it even tougher. his name was Mr. Taft, he was a gym teacher and he also went to my church. He watched me play in phys ed class quite a bit and lobbied hard to get me to come play for him, told me he really needed me, etc. And as luck would have it, my school went to the state championship that year and lost a devastating 1-0 decision to arch rival Nashua High. Not playing that year has always been one of the biggest regrets of my life. It's 20 years later and it still bothers me. I missed so much that year. Ever since then I've always told myself that if my kids get involved in sports I will not only encourage them but I'll do whatever I can to ensure that they don't have to miss out on playing because of something stupid like I did. You can never get those memories back. And besides, I had a shitty time at my prom anyway...