Read The Happiest Days of Our Lives for Free Online Page A
Authors: Wil Wheaton
Guy’s place on the weekend so we could Appletalk our machines together and play NetTrek and Spaceward Ho!
People often asked me in interviews how I avoided the drugs and partying scene that claimed the futures…and lives…of so many of my peers. I’ve just realized that this is a major reason why: While they were getting high and courting the paparazzi in night clubs they were too young to be in, I was sitting in Guy’s house playing really geeky games.
“Still Ill” by The Smiths—When I was in my very early teens, I had one of those massive teenage crushes that consumes your every waking moment and requires you to listen to endless hours of The Smiths in your bedroom wondering why she doesn’t like you “in that way.” This particular crush was on Kyra, who was so beautiful, and so smart, and so cool, and so a senior when I was a freshman that it was never going to happen. Kyra introduced me to The Smiths (on vinyl, no less) and the Violent Femmes (in her BMW 2002 while we were driving to see Harvey at a local college), and was goth before goth was goth. Though I had such a massive crush on her, we were great friends, and she never broke my heart.
“Pale Shelter” by Tears for Fears—I heard this on the radio in my mom’s car on my way to my first day at Crescenta Valley High School, and it will always remind me of that day. I was terrified. I remember sitting in first-period history and not even knowing that I was supposed to write “per. 1” on my papers. I remember that it was nothing like I’d seen in movies and on TV, and how the kids in all my classes were so cruel to me. I was shy and I was scared to death, and I was so withdrawn as a result that they all decided I was aloof and arrogant. I never got a chance to correct that first impression. Wow—as I write this, I can feel that terror all over again. I feel it in my muscle memory and in my soul. God, I felt so tiny as I walked across the quad on that first day, like a little kid who lost his mom in the department store. The time I spent at CV was the absolute worst in my life.
“How Beautiful You Are” by The Cure— Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me , the first compact disc I had, and it’s a good thing, too. I love this record so much, I would have worn it out in any other medium. This was also during the “W + K 4EVR” phase, and, nerdy little artist that I was, whenever I heard this song I longed to go with her to Paris and dance in the rain together. You know what I just realized? I don’t think I ever told her that I was so fiercely head over heels for her, and she either knew and didn’t call me out, or I had the perfect combination of infatuation and insecurity to keep it to myself. I wonder where she is today, and how she’s doing.
“Charge of the Batmobile” by Danny Elfman—My best friend Darin lived just over one mile from my house, across windy streets up in the hills above La Crescenta. We were such Batman geeks and such stupid teens that we frequently put this song on my tape deck and drove way too fast across those windy streets late at night between our two houses. It’s a miracle we never crashed or hurt anyone or anything.
“Phonetic Alphabet—NATO” This is from disc 2 of The Conet Project. I never heard a numbers station in my teens, but I spent a lot of time listening to my shortwave radio and my police scanner (I told you I was a geek) so it reminds me of sitting in the dark (because shortwave listening is so much better when you’re in the dark, for some reason), late at night when propagation was better, spinning the dial and thinking it was the coolest thing in the world to hear transmissions from the other side of the planet. I’m glad the Cold War is over, but boy do I miss the shortwave propaganda broadcasts.
And the Conet Project is the perfect coda to this trip in the wayback machine. That invisible woman’s voice, sending a message to some unknown person in an unknown land, shot into the ionosphere
People often asked me in interviews how I avoided the drugs and partying scene that claimed the futures…and lives…of so many of my peers. I’ve just realized that this is a major reason why: While they were getting high and courting the paparazzi in night clubs they were too young to be in, I was sitting in Guy’s house playing really geeky games.
“Still Ill” by The Smiths—When I was in my very early teens, I had one of those massive teenage crushes that consumes your every waking moment and requires you to listen to endless hours of The Smiths in your bedroom wondering why she doesn’t like you “in that way.” This particular crush was on Kyra, who was so beautiful, and so smart, and so cool, and so a senior when I was a freshman that it was never going to happen. Kyra introduced me to The Smiths (on vinyl, no less) and the Violent Femmes (in her BMW 2002 while we were driving to see Harvey at a local college), and was goth before goth was goth. Though I had such a massive crush on her, we were great friends, and she never broke my heart.
“Pale Shelter” by Tears for Fears—I heard this on the radio in my mom’s car on my way to my first day at Crescenta Valley High School, and it will always remind me of that day. I was terrified. I remember sitting in first-period history and not even knowing that I was supposed to write “per. 1” on my papers. I remember that it was nothing like I’d seen in movies and on TV, and how the kids in all my classes were so cruel to me. I was shy and I was scared to death, and I was so withdrawn as a result that they all decided I was aloof and arrogant. I never got a chance to correct that first impression. Wow—as I write this, I can feel that terror all over again. I feel it in my muscle memory and in my soul. God, I felt so tiny as I walked across the quad on that first day, like a little kid who lost his mom in the department store. The time I spent at CV was the absolute worst in my life.
“How Beautiful You Are” by The Cure— Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me , the first compact disc I had, and it’s a good thing, too. I love this record so much, I would have worn it out in any other medium. This was also during the “W + K 4EVR” phase, and, nerdy little artist that I was, whenever I heard this song I longed to go with her to Paris and dance in the rain together. You know what I just realized? I don’t think I ever told her that I was so fiercely head over heels for her, and she either knew and didn’t call me out, or I had the perfect combination of infatuation and insecurity to keep it to myself. I wonder where she is today, and how she’s doing.
“Charge of the Batmobile” by Danny Elfman—My best friend Darin lived just over one mile from my house, across windy streets up in the hills above La Crescenta. We were such Batman geeks and such stupid teens that we frequently put this song on my tape deck and drove way too fast across those windy streets late at night between our two houses. It’s a miracle we never crashed or hurt anyone or anything.
“Phonetic Alphabet—NATO” This is from disc 2 of The Conet Project. I never heard a numbers station in my teens, but I spent a lot of time listening to my shortwave radio and my police scanner (I told you I was a geek) so it reminds me of sitting in the dark (because shortwave listening is so much better when you’re in the dark, for some reason), late at night when propagation was better, spinning the dial and thinking it was the coolest thing in the world to hear transmissions from the other side of the planet. I’m glad the Cold War is over, but boy do I miss the shortwave propaganda broadcasts.
And the Conet Project is the perfect coda to this trip in the wayback machine. That invisible woman’s voice, sending a message to some unknown person in an unknown land, shot into the ionosphere