I'm 28 years old. I have real problems. Rent, cable bills, late fees, indigestion, lack of dancing skills, ex-girlfriends, bills, bitchy cats, and the sense that I am wasting my life take greater precedence than any stupid little Hazing ritual that High School shits can devise. Then I look at my high school Web site and see that the latest issue of the newspaper is talking about Hazing rituals. They were verboten at the current Homecoming. This year's motivational speaker even got to speak about Hazing. His brilliant word on the subject was -

I thought it was pretty funny until I realized how that kid must have felt to go home and tell his parents what happened

What? Tell your parents that someone duct taped you to a wall, that someone held you up by your legs and made you kiss the floor, that some Senior girl sprayed shaving cream all over your hair? Are you nuts? Even better is a quote by one of my least respected teachers pontificating that "The justification is onesided for hazing and is based on negative notions like revenge and "payback." The justification for school spirit is based on unity and common purpose". Unity and common purpose my ass. That quote was from Mr. Johnson, a Social Studies teacher and possibly one of the most boring arrogant stupid teachers that I have ever encountered. This man actually said that Art was now mediocre because the lower classes were participating in the creation of it. Funny how we always remember the stupid teachers.

So yeah, what the fuck is this "unifying" School Spirit? I mean the way to prove that we had Spirit was to yell out the year that we finally got the fuck out of the place. This mini-patriotic tripe was supposed to do what? Make us like the fact that we were in high school? Make us forget that everything was utterly serious and without humor and no one liked us? Geez, go team go, I guess. Ja Ja Unity, Sehr gut!

But hazing! Now that was something. I never got hazed. I always avoided it. There was a time when I was afraid of it, because it was such a pervasive thing in Homecoming, second only to the football team losing and Gordy Genz, the assistant coach, being booed for being such a fucking shithead gym and Biology teacher. But if they hazed you, they wanted you. You were in. You were suffering for the cliché, for the group. This was as close as suburban teenagers could get to Frat and gang initiations.

I looked at the Web site newspaper. Even though there was nothing in it that could conceivably be traced back to the reality of high school, it still scared me. I remembered those hallways, that pop machine, those lunches spent in a small room with two fairly disgruntled Yearbook photographers. I remember hearing about parties that I never attended and couples clasped into each other for all time. I remember scaring people because I mumbled, talked to myself and laughed over morbid things. I remember placing myself on a pedestal of world-weary cynicism. I was never so old or so cynical as I was when I was 16.

I was a virgin. I didn't even have an opportunity to become disappointed with sex. I was quite lonely and miserable by myself. Now I know that sex was pretty lousy for high schoolers. I know that those lovers that couldn't get enough of each other really couldn't stand each other. I know that my peers who went out partying and drinking and getting laid were just as miserable. Screw them, I'm talking about myself here. I wasn't getting hazed. I wasn't getting laid, drunk, stoned, or stupid. I wanted to get drunk, stoned and stupid. I was good enough to get drunk. I was good enough hazed. Nobody wanted to haze me.

Have I defended hazing yet? No. Oh screw you too. Anyhow hazing is cool. Why is hazing cool? Because anything short of being dropped on your head and crippled for life is purifying. You are being toughened up and befriended simultaneously. They want you in their crowd. Else they wouldn't be fucking with you.

But isn't hazing a horrible degrading experience? Doesn't it take away the dignity? What about that kid telling his parents what happened? Oh boohoo. High school is a lonely violent awful place. Everything that evolved into a quirky personality tick was a crippling personality defect. You wanted to be noticed. You wanted to be left alone. You hated your friends. People didn't like you too much. Your friends couldn't stand you. Now what the fuck can hazing do to the self-esteem of a person that going to high school every day couldn't?

I really feel stupid for writing this essay. I try not to think about high school too often. I couldn't wait to leave the place. Most people find my site through that stupid Catcher in the Rye article so many people who read my stuff are in high school. But I don't want like thinking about high school. There is something so horrible, so breathtakingly awful about high school. I could read my yearbook inscriptions (you're weird but funny, why are you so cynical, have a nice summer, etc.) but I would need to drink first and I don't even think that that would take the edge off of it.

Does anyone think about high school without falling into a deep depression? I mean the only consolation is that I am not there anymore. But put me back in that kind of situation and again I would brim with a defensive bitterness. I wouldn't be able to talk to a woman without fidgeting and looking nervous and scaring her.

Ritual scarifications, beatings, shaving cream, and public nudity don't matter. How much public humiliation is really possible when high school is one big exercise in public humiliation? How much damaging effect can hazing have on a person who lost all self-esteem in 8th grade?

So haze away adolescents of America. Make each other feel welcome. It relieves boredom, toughens you right up and temporarily makes you forget that you ain't getting any. The Columbine Trenchcoats were not hazed. They were humiliated, ostracized, beaten and prayed over. They weren't hazed. Like most of us, no one wanted to haze them because no one felt that they were worthy.