High School Confidential

Unlike Luke who is the main character in Surface Tension, I’m not that big of a fan of going to the cottage.  I guess I enjoy life in the city a bit too much to really get into the spirit of things at the lake.  But despite the fact that the book takes place at a cottage over four summers, I found that I easily related to Luke’s story because his growth from a still boyish 13 year old to a more knowing 16 year old reminded me of me during high school.  Like Luke, I remember still really liking hanging out with my parents at 13.  And, if I’m being completely honest, I think, at 13, I was still at that phase where I took a lot of my self-image from my parents’ cues.  And then a few years passed, and I found myself at sixteen and seventeen still getting along with my parents but more independent.  I was also really busy sorting out who I thought I was.  I’m not sure how aware I was that I was changing and maturing.  I guess I was aware of it to some degree.  I remember feeling like grade 10 was hugely different from grade 9 because, at that point, I had developed “better” taste in music and had made some different friends as a result.  I also remember feeling like, maybe, life was a bit bigger than I had thought when my best friend got a car and drove us downtown from the suburbs.  We didn’t do anything crazy.  We mostly shopped and ate at sushi restaurants, but I still got a rush.    

Do you feel like who you are now is very different from who you were a year ago?  If you were writing a book, like Surface Tension, that looks back at your high school years, what would you write about?