Quiz: Who Were You In High School? -The Toast

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Laura Byko last wrote for The Toast about being politically incorrect, and proud of it.

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Were you a stoner, a jock, a nerd, or a many-talon’d extraterrestrial in high school?

High school was a crazy time, wasn’t it? Hormones swirling, report cards looming, diseases riddling your planet until only you remain – it was wild for everyone. What group were you part of?

1. Uh-oh, you forgot about a major test in Econ today! You…

a. Smoke a joint. Everything’s fine. Everything’s great.

b. Get your coach to talk to your Econ teacher. You’ve been practicing so hard lately. It only makes sense that you’d forget about a test.

c. Forget about a test? Seriously? What is this, amateur hour? You’ve been ready for this test for days.

d. A month ago, this all would have been a fantasy. A hellish fantasy, sure, but an apocalyptic scenario like this – it was only possible in your darkest nightmares. You prepare to take flight. Survey your planet one last time. Maybe you missed something. Some speck of hope. You know you didn’t. It feels good to unfold your wings. A small mercy they still work at all.

2. The homecoming dance is next week, and you don’t have a date yet! You…

a. Smoke a joint. Everything’s fine. Everything’s great. 

b. Flex your muscles a bit in the cafeteria and wait for the potential dates to start lining up. Gosh, you look good. Wow. You can understand if people have been too intimidated to approach you. 

c. Ugh, homecoming. Where a bunch of sweaty cretins get to almost touch genitals, separated by only a few layers of clothing. You’ll be staying home, and it’s not because your crush doesn’t even know you exist. That’s not why at all.

d. You start to wing your way to Mount Anarat. Flying is nice – you can gust through some of the fetid air this way. The stench of disease isn’t totally inescapable, you find. But the sight. The sight. Skeletons everywhere. They look like forests, all of them. Ancient, gnarled forests that lost their leaves to history and turned ashen and sparse.

3. You’re watching a movie today in history class. You…

a. Smoke a joint. Everything’s fine. Everything’s great.

b. Use the time to daydream about scoring the winning goal and being drenched in Gatorade. Movies are opportunities to zone out, obviously.

c. Take notes. You never know what’s going to pop up on a test!

d. Your planet was called Darinia, but now you’re the only one who knows. Someone might come across it someday. Rename it. Excavate it. Decorate a new village with the ruins of your civilization. Maybe that village, maybe it will grow diseased too. Maybe everything rots in the end. No exceptions. You chide yourself. You shouldn’t wish this on anyone, not even whatever life profanes Darinia after you’re gone.

4. There’s a blizzard outside, and you get a snow day! You…

a. Smoke a joint. Everything’s fine. Everything’s great. 

b. Build a massive snow fort and get all your friends involved in a snowball fight. Nothing like keeping active to keep warm.

c. Take advantage of your day off to get ahead on homework. You may even have time to do some extra credit!

d. As you land, you look down at yourself. Fourteen talons, gorgeous green things. It was the talons that went first, for the others. They turned a milky blue. Seemed to hollow out, somehow. So light, so delicate. Their chief weaponry turned to statuary. Yours are as vibrant as ever. You stretch out and lop off a chunk of the mountain, just because you can. 

5. Your basketball team is playing against your rival school tonight. You…

a. Smoke a joint. Everything’s fine. Everything’s great. 

b. Are starting in the game. You can’t wait to take those suckers down. 

c. Don’t care. You prefer sports of the mind.

d. Their wings went next.  They shriveled up until the bones protruded at awful angles. Robbed of their flight, they hobbled around on eight legs as though they were chained to the ground. The gravity seemed to hook their spines. Eventually, you couldn’t fly without an intense guilt shadowing you, as though you were showing off your basic functionality. But you don’t have to worry about that anymore. There’s no one around to see you.

6. Your best friend wants to copy your homework. You…

a. Smoke a joint. Everything’s fine. Everything’s great.

b. Are confused as to why he thinks you’d be a good resource for this. You then direct him to the person you copied off of five minutes ago.

c. Refuse. If you lose your academic integrity, what will you have left?

d. The way it happened – there was so much confusion. But even when you understood, when you all understood, it still didn’t make sense. You’d had sicknesses before, but this, this was war. A people at war with itself from the inside, and winning. You guess the war’s over now. You’re alive, but you’re on the losing side. 

7. You find a note from a secret admirer in your locker. You…

a. Smoke a joint. Everything’s fine. Everything’s great.

b. Are way stoked. You did have a great game last night. Someone was bound to have noticed.

c. Despair at the cruel prank someone is pulling on you. You can’t even allow yourself to get your hopes up. Nope. Nope.

d. The view is spectacular. Darinia is a craggy planet. Its land juts out every which way and the mountains look like they’re dripping up into the sky. They’re layered with purples and blues and oranges, and the sky is the softest yellow imaginable, and together they form the landscape of your life. All your memories, all the best ones – they were against this backdrop, and you barely appreciated it. You appreciate it now. So, so much.

8. Your parents are going out of town for the weekend, and they explicitly told you not to throw a party. You…

a. Smoke a joint. Everything’s fine. Everything’s great.

b. Prepare to throw a rager. They’ll never know, unless you drunkenly start playing catch with vases again. But that probably won’t happen.

c. Consider having a couple friends over, before realizing that might fall into the scope of a party. Looks like you’ll be spending the weekend alone, just the way you like it.

d. The smell is obvious, but when you’re alone, sitting on the mountain, it’s the silence that’s more sinister. It snakes its way into you through your ears and your eyes and your claws until each beat of your hearts seems unnatural. You, your breath, your movement – you’re the outlier now, an intruder in a lifeless world. You’re the exception, and you don’t know why.

9. The school day is over, and everyone is heading to after school activities. You…

a. Smoke a joint. Everything’s fine. Everything’s great.

b. Head to practice, duh. 

c. Have to decide between going to Model UN and Mock Trial. You put the “extra” in extracurricular.

d. You wonder if you’re special somehow. You’ve always assumed your averageness. Specialness shouldn’t feel like this, should it? Like you’re full of rocks and rage? You decide that you’re the last, and that’s all. Last doesn’t mean good, and it doesn’t mean bad, and it doesn’t mean special. It just means last. 

10. It’s time to vote for senior superlatives! You…

a. Smoke a joint. Everything’s fine. Everything’s great.

b. Know you’ll probably get Most Athletic, but wish people could look beyond your muscles and see that you should win Prettiest Eyes more than anything else.

c. Know that you’ll probably get Most Intelligent, but wish people could look beyond your grades and see that you should win Prettiest Eyes more than anything else.

d. Your wings beat faster and faster as you fly straight up. This place has nothing to offer you, so you offer yourself to it. It hasn’t chewed you up yet, for whatever reason. No Darinian has ever tried to escape the atmosphere before. No Darinian will again. Maybe it will rip you apart, scatter your tatters back down to lay with your people. Maybe you’ll break through, somersault among the stars before you find a new place to bed down. Either way – you’ll be free. 

Now for the results! You answered…

Mostly As: You were a total stoner. You could float between cliques, befriending anyone who wanted to talk about the origin of the universe or how weird feet look, if you think about it. You know? All those toes. Weird.

Mostly Bs: You were a major jock, excited about all things athletic. You really enjoyed high school. You even occasionally refer to your time there as “the glory days,” which your non-jock friends don’t even pretend to understand.

Mostly Cs: You were a complete nerd. You acted as though you were above most typical teenager-type activities, but that was mostly to mask your feelings of loneliness and strangeness. You were really smart, though!

Mostly Ds: You didn’t deserve this. No one deserves this. I’m so sorry – sorry for your loss. Sorry for everything, I guess. I’m sorry.

Laura Byko is a student who wants to be a writer but is currently a waitress. She lives in Pittsburgh, and her twitter handle is @Byk_Laura_Byk, if you’re into that kind of thing.

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