My high school years were not the best years of my life. Oh, sure, I have a few good and even excellent memories from those three years (back in those days in my sector, intermediate school was grades 7-9 and high school was grades 10-12). Along with those few moments in time is a surprising amount of bitterness about stupid crap that I thought was long buried, until I start talking about it. So I’ll try not to go there, because that wasn’t the point of this post when I started typing.

I went to McKinley High School in Honolulu, Hawaii. Since I am easily amused, I get a big kick out of the fact that two favorite TV shows of mine, much like my young life, take place at a McKinley High School. And to add to the amusement, the fictional schools are both somewhere in the vast midwestern wasteland, where I am trapped for now.

The obvious and current one, of course, is Glee. The one that I relate to more because it was set closer in time to my own high school years, is Freaks and Geeks. Lindsay Weir in Freaks and Geeks is pretty much who I was in high school.

Back to my McKinley High School. If you do a Google search, we come up first. We are the Tigers. I spent an embarrassingly long time today researching the sports team nicknames of the fictional McKinley High Schools (thanks, @jenroack, for the help with Glee’s McKinley). Is that sad or what? What’s that? Vikings for Freaks and Geeks, and Titans for Glee. You’re welcome.

The school newspaper was still a daily when I was there. Yup, that’s right, we were one of five high school dailies in the nation. I’m not sure when the paper ceased daily publication. I wonder if there are any high school dailies left? With the creeping demise of print publications in general, I’m guessing the answer is “no.” Even though my aspirations for a career in journalism and any illusions that I can in fact write crumbled to dust long ago, I am still proud of being part of the Daily Pinion.

(NaBloPoMo | June ’10: 3 of 30)