My brother emailed me from a writer’s conference in Alberta:

Some guy came up to me today and said he was in Annie Get Your Gun with me at BCI (our old high school, in BrockVegas). He refused to tell me his name. I wouldn’t care, but he works here and I’m still here for another week and a half. Who was it?

My response:

Tim Picotte? Sorry, I’ve core dumped my high school memories and only retained top level recall, like when I had to get past mom while peaking on LSD.

I do remember not liking the songs, though. Again … Sorry.

It got me thinking about just how much I remember about high school, which truthfully is very little. I was counting the days before I left Brockville by the time I hit grade 10 and knew my life was destined to become 100% better after escaping that town. I coasted through high school. No real Judd Apatow kind of experiences to write about, no drama to dredge up into a memoir.

But some highlights would be:

• I did back stage stuff (props, stage hand) for a youth theatre group and would drink lots on the weekend. I don’t recall any specific party, just the amount of them.
• In my head, bored while helping a friend move, I demanded that the dead parents of the girl I was dating at the time, show themselves to me. At that precise moment, the girl came out of her bedroom to show me a photo of them.
• I wore two types of “doctor” shirt to school (the old kind, with the buttons up the side and across the shoulder): One was pure white, the other had blood splatters across it. I also would wear a bolero jacket from Le Chateau.
• I improvised 90% of my lines and songs during our 4 shows of The Wizard of Oz in grade 11. I played the Cowardly Lion.

That’s about it. Now… England stories, I got tons of.