The Thursday Downer (retro edition)

It was 30 years ago right about now that we were on our high school winter break (Hendrick Hudson, Montrose, New York). Boy did we need the break. 

Our senior year wasn't exactly going as planned. Our best friend, with whom we grew up, our families vacationed together in 2018 and 2019, had moved away. We were downright depressed about it for weeks. In truth we let it get to us. What do ya want? We were 18.

We'd had a nasty run-in with the eye-talian school bully. He must have been about 6-2, 250 (in those days we were 5-10, 205)*. He'd fit right in on the set of Goodfellas. 'You want the jacket to come of?' he once challenged? 'Yeah, I'd like to see that,' we responded. He backed down. I dreamt about that and him for decades afterword. We know that greaseball son-of-a-bitch later did some time.** 

We didn't have much luck with girls, another reason for our general malaise.

We filled spiral notebooks with our writing. Usually we sat in the back of class and wrote. Teachers thought we were taking copious notes. That year we wrote one technothriller and one sci-fi thriller. No ideas from those have made into our novels.

Then, like now, we wore blue jeans. Docksiders were our shoe of choice. We had two long sleeved Champion shirts, one blue, one white, a couple of button down shirts, our authentic #11 Phill Simms Jersey which still hangs in our closet. We had a couple of sweaters, one dark blue, one white with squiggly lines, very Cosby. We had a Bush bashing 'Uncle George wants you to forget...' T-shirt, a 'Political Correctness, the new Intolerance' T-shirt, and a couple of Wesley College T-shirts we got after deciding to go there. Also a Roger Williams College T-shirt; we didn't get in. 

We applied to four schools and batted .500 (graduated 104 out of 136, 850 combined SAT score). Roger Williams was the one we wanted. We also got into Mitchell, a two-year school in Connecticut. Wesley it was. Delaware seemed sooo far off. Worked out though. 

We drove a blue, 1986 Toyota Celica GT. If one rolled down the passenger side window, the door would pop open. 

We were really into George Thorogood.

Back in those days we went by our middle name, Thompson, Tom for short. Now when anyone calls me or asks for 'Tom Stroock' we get a far off look like Alec Guiness in Star Wars and think, 'Tom Stroock...Tom Stroock. Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time...'*** We decided to go by Will after a summer visit to Wesley and also we really liked Commander Will Riker on Start Trek.

Senior year wasn't all bad. In the winter we went to drama rehearsal every night. We played Captain Bracket in South Pacific. We still know all the songs and used to sing them to our children, 'We got sunlight on the sand. We got moonlight on the sea. We got mangoes and bananas you can pic right of the tree. We got volley ball and ping pong and a lot of dandy games. What ain't we got? We ain't got dames.'

The girl on the left is dead.

We played an awful lot of Harpoon on our Apple Macintosh. Many of the scenarios we fought out can be read in our World War 1990 series. 

We skipped the senior prom, fed up with the whole experience we were. Screw them. We had a grand time at our 20th HS reunion.

* 250 these days.

**Don't like our Italian ball-busting? Go fuck yourself.

***Mrs. Stroock has never called us 'Tom'.