Dazed and Confused

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High school was a drag, am I right? Line up, sit down, raise your hand, don’t speak out of turn, be a good Catholic, blah blah. Aside from that I can thank high school for meeting my friends, so it wasn’t all bad. When I started as a fresh faced Year 7 in 1995, I look ahead to the next five years, and it felt like an eternity. To come to the same place, five days a week, all year, every year, didn’t fill me with much anticipation. Not having the choice whether to attend or not, it didn’t feel like I had much choice at all in my younger teenager years. Thank God for the movies; my escape.

But when Year 11 rolled around in 1999, the horizon as finally in sight. All I could think about was finishing school, and although still a full two years away, it couldn’t come quickly enough in my opinion. I actually enjoyed Year 11 more than Year 12, as my fellow students and I were in the upper age range of school, but still had one year of experimentation's and mistakes up our sleeves, before the final year of school started in 2000. That year would be all business, and the thought of Year 12 daunted me. It almost didn’t happen, as I went through my phase (like every teenage boy did) of running away and joining the army. I looked into it, sent away for a flier and went to an information session. I spoke with a few other students in the year level, who would finish after Year 11 and I envied them for getting out so soon. However, as Year 11 progressed for me, I’d decided to stick around and finish Year 12. Why not? I’d come this far, so I might as well complete high school in case I needed my V.C.E. although even at that point, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going onto University afterwards. 

And so, with still over a year to go till I could escape the clutches of class, I turned to the one film that perfectly captured the end of school. Even though it was made in 1993, and set in 1976, I didn’t watch this for the first time until 1999, because before then it didn’t appeal to me. But once I knew what it was about, I saw “Dazed and Confused” as my way to prematurely live the last day of school over and over, before it actually arrived for me.

Directed by Richard Linklater (Boyhood) and starring a large cast of then mostly unknown actors – several of who would go on to much bigger things – Dazed and Confused was the teen film I watched more than any other. If you can believe it, I’ve probably watched this film around fifty times in my life, usually during the school holidays of Year 11 and 12 before I had a job or much else to do. The weeks and days were counting down to graduation, and I couldn’t wait. And I imagined maybe the end of high school could be as fun as it was for the characters in this movie, minus the marijuana of course.

It’s the final day of school for Lee High School in Texas, 1976. We the audience are transported back to this decadent decade through a stellar soundtrack that picks it songs perfectly for every moment. Entering the high school grounds, we are introduced to a barrage of characters; football jocks, stoners, hippies and nerds, all surprisingly friends and hanging out with each other as one collective group.  Why couldn’t that happen with my year level damn it? The main character of the story is Randal “Pink” Floyd (Jason London); the popular, likeable and conscientious quarterback for the school football team. He’s still got one year to go, and there’s pressure on him from the coach to sign a contract that prohibits him from engaging in drugs, alcohol or sex after midnight for the entire summer, to ensure he’s in tip-top shape to play football in the new school year. But being the defiant one he is, Pink holds off from signing the contract. He’s the centre of this school’s social group, getting along with everyone no matter what their style or substance of choice.  He hangs with the stoners (Pickford, Michelle and Slater), plays cards with the quiet nerds (Tony, Mike and Cynthia) and talk’s trash and drinks beers with his football buddies – Don, Benny and Melvin. 

Across the other side of town at the Junior High School, little Mitch (Wiley Wiggins) is terrified for the last day of school as he knows what awaits him when the bell rings. The seniors uphold a special tradition, involving chasing down the Freshman, and smacking their asses black and blue with wooden paddles. Initiation of the most humiliating type. Mitch’s older sister asks the senior’s to take it easy on him, and although they say they will, make it even worse for him. It doesn’t help Mitch’s case that an older senior O’Bannion (Ben Affleck), is a total dick and deliberately repeated his final year just to hurt the freshman again.  

In the background of all these shenanigans, a big party is being planned for the final day of school, to take place at Pickford’s house. But when the beer delivery guy arrives early while Pickford’s parents are still home, the party gets cancelled. So jumping in their muscle cars, the gang just end up driving around, talking, drinking, smoking weed, playing Foosball, smoking weed, chasing down fleeing Freshman, smashing up mailboxes, smoking weed and smoking weed. Also along for the ride is Wooderson (Matthew McConaughey), who graduated severl years before but still hangs out with high school students. His down-to-earth style means he never really became an adult and reminds his younger counterpart to just keep Livin. He also coins one of the best phrases of the whole movie, "That's what I love about these high schools - I get older, they stay the same age" 

The characterisation, filmmaking style and attention to detail by director Linklater, is absolutely spot on, and you feel like you’ve travelled back in time to the 1970’s, just hanging out with these pot heads an hooligans. Being transported back to another decade was always the biggest attraction of this film for me, and if I were to travel back to another era and live that time as a teen, it would have been the 70’s. I liked the music, I liked the laid back style, and I could have kept my hair long!

When the end of Year 12 finally arrived for me and my mates, we had big plans to make it a memorable moment. Our school allowed us to spend the day after final classes relishing in “Muck Up Day”. A long running tradition where the Year 12’s could run amok on the oval, make a mess and have some fun. We could bring water pistols, have mud fights and let it all loose after thirteen years of imprisonment. But our fun fuelled antics wouldn’t just be reserved to the high school oval; it started as soon as the last class ended. When the bell rang, every Year 12 gathered in the A Block, our school’s three story building for senior classes. Some of the girls had gone to a lot of trouble to suspend some tough plastic sheets across the opening that went up all three levels. Piled on top of the layer of plastic were dozens of balloons. The idea was the have someone rip this plastic and let the balloons shower us all below. But the boys from the “Wogs” group of our year level – always the goons and jokesters – ripped the plastic early, and ruined the girl’s hard work. Oh well, it served its purpose anyway as the whole ground floor of the A Block was filled with balloons and the bodies of our entire year level, crowded into on large group, jumping up and down and yelling like mad. Some of the students hugged, some of them cried, but the Wog boys just chanted “Were gonna get some pussy” at the top of their lungs, until eventually the Year 12 coordinator told them to shut up. Each group of friends in the year level disbanded into the wild from the confines of school, and we’d all be back tomorrow morning for our Muck Up Day.

I had to work on the last night of school. Not that I had to, but I chose to because I would have the next night off for the graduation ceremony, and any night I didn’t work was lost pay. In the weeks leading up to school finishing, word had travelled on the grounds that I worked at a fish and seafood shop. The requests for fish heads and guts came flying in, because the main part of Muck Up Day – unofficially – was to disgrace the school in some way. The year before us, the Year 12’s had gotten pig heads from butchers, or chicken heads, and placed them randomly around the school. So quietly and discreetly, some of the other guys in the year level came up to me, asking for some fish guts and I let them know I was the guy who could deliver the goods. I would scoop up what I could on the night before school finished, wrap it in plastic and paper, and then store it in the fridge at work. Then on the final night of school, as I went in to clean up, the “customers” came to collect their stuff, and like a dodgy drug deal I handed it over and told them to use it wisely. I kept some for myself of course. Later that night, I got a call at the fish shop while still cleaning up that some of my mates had arrived at my house, and were waiting for me. My place was just a two minute walk from the school, and would be our base of operations for the night. That night would see no sleep, some drinking and waiting patiently till the morning came to attend out much awaited Muck Up Day. But not before visiting the school in the black of night.

Like a sleuth of ninjas under the cover of darkness, eight of us walked quietly down the street to the back entrance of the school. A security guard had been hired to patrol the grounds that night, as the school staff well and truly knew some culprits would show up to do something stupid. Armed with my bag of fish guts, as well as a few heads, we planned our attack. Our plan was to stick some fish heads on the spikes of the barbed wire fence and fling guts onto the basketball court. But then, someone saw a flashlight and dark silhouette approaching the fence from inside the school, so we high tailed it out of there. Adamant I would dispense my fish guts at some point in the night, I took them home, and place them in the garden bin positioned in the front yard. I couldn’t take them in the house, because my dad would smell it and ask me to chuck it out. I figured the fish guts would be okay wrapped in bag for a little while. Wrong! The next morning, my sister let me know the fish guts had attracted a few cats, so I disposed of it properly. 

 

Retreating back into my house and crowded in my bedroom, eight of my mates and I – and my dog – hung out for the night. Listening to music, having a drink and just talking about the five years of high school we were glad to see finished. A video camera got passed around and we each shared our impression of high school. The speeches were funny, both long and brief, and capturing the characters of all the guys there. My dog was part of the group that night, excited to have so many new people in his house. When we decided to go for a walk again, we had to take the dog as if we left without him, he’d bark like mad and wake up my dad and sister (mum was away lucky for her). So we walked up to7-11, got a feed, and then walked around the school grounds. Out the front of the school, the lawn had been showered in toilet paper and we ran into the Wog boys hanging out. One of them told us he’d thrown a rock at the school, which smashed a window of the A Block. Then another rock was thrown which apparently hit the security guard in the head. Our year level would be the last of St. John’s Regional College to have Muck Up Day on the grounds. To any later generations after us, sorry.  

In the couple of hours before we were allowed to enter the school grounds for our Muck Up Day, the entire year level commuted at the baseball reserve across the road from the back of our school. How we all gravitated to that place, I’m not sure because this was 2000, so no one had mobiles, and there was no way to coordinate such a meeting. But for an hour or so, we were all there, hanging out as one group, together. There was drinking, smoking, people passed out on benches and everyone just talking and getting along. It was the first time in five years of high school our entire year level had commuted in one place and for that brief hour, we were all one group, and those sub groups of the past five years were gone. Blended as one, we were all friends for that night. It was nice.

As daylight came, the senior quadrangle near the A Block slowly filled up with Year 12’s. Many of them were hung-over and none of us had slept a wink. How could we? The excitement of finishing school was too much to even think about sleeping. To kill the time before we could cause chaos on the oval, we passed the time by wrapping up one of our mates in toilet paper so he looked like a mummy. That was fun. Then, we got the green light from the teachers to run like mad down to the oval, and throw mud, fish oil, red jelly and whatever else we could get on each other. This was the highlight of the end of school for sure. All that energy and frustration cooped up from five years of classes, homework and assemblies was let out and free. The past years of high school suddenly became a blur, and just like that, it was all over. The rest of the day consisted of hanging out at one of the guys places, and then we all returned to school that night for our official graduation. Afterward, a mate of mine and me (both 18) planned to head to the Hallam Pub, but we were both so tired and stuffed, we went to a movie instead. I had been awake for almost 36 hours by this point, and fell asleep in the theatre. I know! Me, falling asleep at the movies. It’s the only time it happened, believe me.

Then graduation was done, and a few weeks of exams followed. The last time the whole year level would be together again was our Year 12 Formal (like the Prom for you American’s). Once exams were done, our school put on a shindig for us at a local reception centre. Once again, me and the boys got together and piled into the combi van that belonged to one of the guys dad, armed with a sub and loud music, and off we went. A few drinks were had on the way, and upon arriving the sliding door of the van was opened and about ten glass bottles fell out and smashed all over the ground. The staff were cool about it though, sending a waiter out with a brush and pan to sweep it up, and then like it didn’t even happen, we were greeted by more staff who had trays of beer, wine and soft drink for free. It was a great night, were once again everyone just got on as one equal group, which was rare for our year level. And that was it. The next day, I woke up and went to work that night. School was over, I had no commitments and no routine. I was free, and left with a fleeting feeling of emptiness. I wasn’t missing school but rather, at a loss as to what exactly I was going to do with myself. It made me think of the end of Dazed and Confused, after the beer bust at the park, and everyone heads home for the night. The song “Tuesday’s Gone” by Lynyrd Skynyrd plays over that scene, which always feels like a song about things coming to an end. It’s a rock song, but it has s slow, sombre feel about it, as if you’re looking back on a past you wished would pass you by at the time, and when it does leave you, you kind of wish you could do it all over again. Because we always look back on the past with a nostalgic view, remembering the good times, the fun times and the friendships, and instantly forgetting about all that other crap, like social groups, being misunderstood or not accepted. That didn’t matter anymore. School was over.  

 

With a whole year ahead of me and no plans set in place, rather than just an average job to go to each afternoon and plenty of time to do, nothing, this was what actually I’d been waiting for. And as soon school ended, my real life and the best years of all were just getting started.  

 

 

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