The following is a video from my YouTube Channel, Jack’s World. It’s a more personal video in that it contains some real-life experiences that I wanted to share. With schools set to open again very soon, I felt the time was right to reach out to those who are just entering high school. For me, it was a dark and sad period in my life. However, it didn’t have to be. I made it that way. As such, I want to offer some advice to others so that their experiences can be better than mine. Enjoy!
Tag Archives: high school memories
A Personal Story (And Perspective) On Daylight Savings Day
It’s that time of year again, at least if you’re in these countries. Daylight Savings day is upon us. It’s not a holiday, nor a means for major celebration. It just means that this weekend, we can all look forward to an extra hour of sleep.
Honestly, after the year we’ve all endured, an extra hour of sleep is literally the least we can hope for. I’ll gladly take it.
Now, I don’t have an opinion on daylight savings, why it’s observed, or whether we should continue observing it. That sort of contention is just not worth my time or anyone else’s. Instead, I’d like to take a moment in these last few days before we fall back to share another personal story.
It involves high school, but I promise it’s not nearly as awkward or angst-ridden as some of the others I’ve shared. This story is more an observation than a personal account and one I think is more relevant. Say what you will about teenagers and young people in this current environment. They do have issues and they’re worth highlighting.
To appreciate this story, I need to offer a little context. While I was in high school, the last week of October was uniquely difficult. It wasn’t just because the weather was getting colder, mid-terms had just wrapped up, and the holidays were still too far off to warrant excitement. Much of the difficulty, in this case, had to do with sleep.
It wasn’t so much about getting enough of it, which is a challenge in its own right, as it was about waking up. I lived in a school district where high school classes started at 7:20 a.m. If you weren’t in your first period class by that time, you were late and you could get in trouble. That might not have been an issue if you lived nearby. Unfortunately, I wasn’t that lucky.
My family lived on the boundaries of the school district. That meant I had to take the bus to school, which wasn’t too big a deal. However, in order to get to school on time, the bus had to pick me and my classmates at 6:30 a.m. to make it on time.
Now, I know some people are already rolling their eyes. We had to be at the bus stop by 6:30 in the morning. Why is that such a big deal? There are people with jobs that require they wake up even earlier.
To those people, I have a simple message.
First off, we don’t get paid to go to high school. We’re forced to, by law. Second, we were teenagers. We’re not exactly used to night shifts at the salt mines. We’re still going through puberty, trying to transition into adulthood, and dealing with plenty of awkward feelings along the way. Have some goddamn sympathy.
With that in mind, take a moment to appreciate what it’s like the week before we fall back with daylight savings. You wake up at 6:00 a.m. and it’s still nearly pitch black outside. You can still see stars in the sky. You can barely see any hint of the sun.
If you’re a functional adult who is used to early mornings, it’s no big deal. If you’re a teenager who’s several steps away from being that functional, the world is basically asking us why the hell we aren’t still sleeping. Our collective response is the same. We have no choice. This is what we have to do, by law, to get to school on time.
Make no mistake. Waking up this early and standing outside when it’s still dark out is jarring to a teenager’s mind and body. The last week of October was just the most pronounced. During the first weeks of school, you could at least depend on the sun coming up, which helped wake you up. By this time, however, you had no such benefit. It was still dark out and it stayed dark until you got to school.
This is where my story comes into play. It’s not just one particular incident on one particular day, either. For the entirety of my high school career, this sort of thing played out every year on the last week of October. If I were to catch up with my old classmates, they’d probably share the same sentiment.
It went like this.
We wake up at 5:30 a.m. to get ready for school. It’s pitch black out.
We take a shower, eat some breakfast, and gather our things. It’s still pitch black out.
We go out to the bus stop at about 6:25 a.m. It’s still pitch black out.
The bus arrives, we get on, and we settle in for the ride. It’s still pitch black out.
For the entire trip, we’re all only half-awake. Nobody talks. Nobody socializes. We just sit there, try to keep our eyes open, and get whatever sliver of rest we can before we arrive. Most of the time, the sun is just barely starting to rise when we get to school.
I know it’s not the most harrowing story about high school, but it does stand out and it wouldn’t be at all possible without daylight savings. It’s because of that time shift that it’s still so dark out in the morning on that final week leading up to it. An adult may see that as a trivial detail, but from the perspective of tired teenage minds, I assure you it isn’t.
I try to forget a lot of things from that time in my life. I’ll never forget those early morning bus rides on the last week of October. They always had this strange, ominous feel to them. Setting aside the ambience, the impact it had on me and the rest of my classmates was distinct.
Being out at that bus stop when it was still so dark and riding to school before the sun came up just put everyone in a drowsy, lethargic mood. Riding to school in that environment wasn’t just quiet. It was dead silent at time.
Nobody said a word.
Nobody talked, socialized, or screwed around.
It was just too dark and we were all too tired. You think packing a bunch of teenagers in a bus is bound to create something rowdy and decadent? Well, when it’s that dark out and that early in the morning, you don’t have to worry. When you’re still tired, you’re not going to have the energy.
Now, that did change to an extent the following week. Once we set the clocks back, there’s usually daylight outside when we go to the bus stop. That does make a difference. In fact, it makes a big difference. There’s even some science behind it.
I was still a miserable high school student, but at least it easier to stay awake when the sun was out. I also noticed that once we had some sunlight, people talked and socialized more on the bus. It was just less depressing overall. Being less tired will have that effect.
In hindsight, I’m amazed that we all functioned as well as we did in those conditions. The science is also catching up to the sentiment. More and more people are uncovering the negative effects of having high school start so early. Teenagers may be immature and dumb at times, but they’re still human. If they don’t get enough sleep, they’re not going to function well.
A lack of sleep has all sorts of negative impacts. Add the rigors of adolescence to the mix and you’re just going to make both much worse. It’s something I find myself contemplating every year in the days leading up to daylight savings.
We have a lot of problems in this world and teenagers have a lot to deal with. Nobody can do much of anything if they’re too tired or sleep deprived.
Filed under Current Events, Jack Fisher's Insights, real stories
Awkward Boners And Another (Overly) Personal Story
Brace yourselves because I’m about to get personal on this blog again. Yes, it’s going to be the awkward kind of personal. Yes, it’s also the sexy kind of personal. No, it’s not that kind of sexy. I still save the bulk of that for my novels.
I think it’s important to get personal when building an audience. It helps us relate to one another. I can’t just be some faceless guy behind a computer screen trying to sell sexy stories. I need to be someone with which people can feel a personal connection. That connection is the difference between a passing audience and a loyal one. The sexy stories I sell, as a result, are just a nice bonus.
Now, I’ve already gotten pretty personal on this blog before. I’ve talked about my love of sleeping naked, my own circumcision, and the soul-crushing, four-year prison sentence that was high school. I hope those stories have endear my life and this blog to people. I’d like to deepen that endearment and I intend to do that by talking about awkward boners.
I’m sure I’ve got every man’s attention now. I’ll still give a moment for the women to stop rolling their eyes. I get it, ladies. Awkward boners are one of those things that men make too big a deal of. Yes, it’s a unique experience to a particular gender, but it’s not even in the same hemisphere as giving birth or breast feeding. I’m not going to equate awkward boners with that, but I do feel they’re worth talking about, if only because it’s funny.
In fact, I think it’s because we don’t talk about these gender-specific experiences that men and women have such a hard time relating to one another. For some, talking about the joys of birth is a bit too much. I think awkward boners are a good start, if only because they reveals a vulnerability in men that they don’t readily admit.
This brings me to my personal experience. Yes, it’s about an awkward boner situation that I endured. I admit it. I’m a healthy man who has had at least one awkward boner in his life. Any healthy man who doesn’t admit that is a goddamn liar. While I doubt I’ll start a trend, I can at least tell a story that should brighten everyone’s morning.
This particular story happens in middle school, which is sort of like the sub-par prequel to high school. It’s like a mild soreness that you don’t realize will one day become a stabbing pain in the pit of your soul. I won’t say it was awful, but there were definitely signs that being a teenager was going to suck on a lot of levels.
This was also before I developed a serious acne problem that utterly destroyed what little confidence I had. I like to think that during middle school, I was at least somewhat content. I won’t say I was as happy as a fly in a shit factory, but I wasn’t miserable. For the most part, life was okay.
At the same time, however, puberty was starting to kick my ass, as it does with most people when they enter those fragile years between being a kid and being a walking time bomb of hormones. As a result, unexpected and unwelcome erections were becoming more common.
For the most part, I was able to hide those erections as well as any burgeoning young man. Talk to any man who survived that part of his life and they’ll tell you the same. They learned to be tactful, discreet, and downright cunning at hiding their boners. You might say that men at this age become boner ninjas, which is a lot less sexy than it sounds.
Every now and then, though, our boner ninja fails. In this particular instance, it failed at one of the worst possible times, short of me giving a speech to the entire school while wearing a speedo. I’ll give everyone a moment to conjure that mental image. You’re welcome.
On this particular day when my inner boner ninja failed me, I was in the seventh grade. It was late in the spring and really starting to get hot outside. As such, gym class involved a lot more outdoor activities that turned us from hormonal time bombs into sweaty hormonal time bombs. I didn’t mind this because it made the afternoon go by faster.
However, my body just loved making it harder for me and yes, that means exactly what you think it means. I’d just finished my English class. Gym was the last class I had before I went to lunch so I went to the locker room eager to work up an appetite. I go to change into my gym uniform, as I’d done almost every day to that point. Then, it happens.
I don’t know whether it was the poetry assignment I’d had in English class. I don’t know whether it was because of some cute girl I’d seen who just started wearing a bra. Maybe I’d just read one too many Wonder Woman comics that day. I don’t know, but whatever it was, something triggered an unexpected launch in my pants. It wasn’t a half-launch either. This rocket was going into orbit and staying there for a while.
Now, keep in mind, I’m in a boy’s locker room in a middle school full of immature teenagers. You can’t find a time or place less appropriate without involving clowns, dead puppies, and buckets of expired milk. On top of that, I’m up against the clock. I needed to be out in the gym with the rest of the class within five minutes. For a situation like this, that’s the longest five minutes you’ll have outside a dentist’s office.
I don’t even get a chance to undress before the situation escalates. By the time I get to my locker, we’re already at ignition. By the time I unlock it, we’re at liftoff and we’ve cleared the tower. There are several obnoxious boys next to me, talking about crap that should arouse absolutely no one. All I can do is keep my head down and silently curse my dick for doing this to me.
I know my body well enough at this point to understand that this situation is going to get worse before it gets better. If I start undressing, there’s no way I’m going to hide this. For a moment, I just stand there and stare at my uniform in my locker. At that point, though, my rocket is well into its orbit and re-entry is not possible.
I needed to act and act fast. I had only four minutes left and that was just not going to cut it. Finally, I made a decision. It was going to require some theatrics on my part, but there was no other way.
Tactfully, I grab my uniform from my locker. Then, I clench my stomach as though I’m in pain and head right for the bathroom stalls. From where I’m standing, those bathroom stalls might as well be in the heart of Mordor. Instead of Orcs, though, I have to weave through a bunch of spitting, swearing teenage boys. It was an arduous journey, to say the least.
At one point, a kid next to me that I knew looked concerned. He asked me if I was already. I instinctively said I was fine, but my stomach wasn’t. I might have said something about the tacos I ate for dinner last night, hoping he would fill in the blanks.
That seemed to do the trick, though. He didn’t ask again. I managed to work my way around the crowd of other boys and make it into the bathroom stall. In my first stroke of luck, there was nobody in there. I was able to close the door, lock it, and breathe the biggest sigh of relief I’d felt to that point in my life.
After I was alone in the stall, I was able to settle down and let my penis complete its orbit, so to speak. It still took a lot longer than I wanted. I remember thinking about anything and everything that would get it to settle.
If you’re a healthy man, you know what I’m talking about here. You’ll go through any number of unsexy thoughts and images. You’ll picture your grandmother in a nightgown. You’ll picture your dog throwing up on your bed. You’ll even resort to doing algebra in your head. When algebra is an option, you know your body is working against you.
For me, I don’t quite remember what I thought about to subdue my erection. It still didn’t work as quickly as I’d hoped. I still had somewhat of a quasi-boner by the time I got undressed and put my uniform on. I was still up against the clock too. By the time the warning bell rang, I had to grit my teeth and hope for the best.
I managed to put the rest of my stuff in my locker and make it out into the gym. I still had somewhat of a tent in my pants. Keep in mind, these gym shorts aren’t exactly known for being well-fitted. I had to be very careful with how I carried myself, especially as the girls started making their way out of the locker room. It also helped that the gym uniforms weren’t exactly sexy. Even raging teenage hormones can only do so much.
Once I sat down and waited for the gym teacher, I was able to finally able to complete re-entry, so to speak. In another stroke of luck, the teacher was a bit late so I had a few extra minutes to make sure no more rockets were ignited. It still made for some tense moments, but I got through it.
That, my friends, is the story of my most awkward boner. I’m sure there are other men out there who have had far worse experiences in far less comfortable situations. It is, in a sense, the shared price of masculinity. No one is immune to it. We never know when it’s going to happen. When it does, we learn that we aren’t always in control of our bodies. Sometimes, our bodies control us.
There’s almost something poetic about that. I’m sure plenty of men disagree and just see awkward boners as an annoyance. Well now, you’ve heard my story. If there are any men out there feeling bold, I encourage you to share yours as well. Please let me know in the comments. There’s no shame or judgment. For men and women alike, let’s share this experience and everything it can teach us.
Perhaps I can make this part of my sexy discussions. Boners can be awkward, but they can be beautiful too. Let’s not let that awkwardness undermine that beauty.
Filed under Jack Fisher's Insights
Jack Fisher's Official Publishing Blog 