I grew up in a nonreligious household. My mom died a week after I graduated HS. ( It was 1980- before cell phones.) I had left the house that day and was out all day. Late in the afternoon I heard my mom say "goodby" . It was her voice and she was not there but still I heard it clear as day.

I got home late that evening and my dad was waiting in the living room to tell me that mom died.

Bill Nye and others like him have a point but still can not answer experiences like I and others have had. There is no evolution theory that explains supernatural events.

Yes I believe in GOD. There is something out there that science can't explain. Yes there are a lot of nut job preachers and followers. It does not change the fact there is something beyond us.


We will all find out on our deathbed.

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I'm 35, HS class of 96, so Gangsta's Paradise came out early in my senior year.

I remember there was a volunteer exercise in health class where we were asked to bring in a song that we found powerful or meaningful, play it for the class, and then discuss it. Someone brought GP in and, during the discussion portion, the teacher told us that so far at least one person in every class had chosen this song.

Even people like myself who generally did not listen to rap appreciated this song. Only the honkiest of honkies felt otherwise.

There was definitely something about this song in that time.

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Your video, HS Basketball Player Dunks, Rebounds and Dunks in 1 Jump, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

For those that don't know: https://www.google.ca/search?q=wordstar+4.0&client=firefox-a&hs=hiI&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=TMp0U7PPFoP6oAT4
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Your video, Bister Mungle (Mr Bungle) Eureka HS Talent Show 1985!!!, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Relatively speaking High School is a short episode in one's life, unfortunately it occurs during a period of heavy social and physical development. So experiences during this time can often play a major role in how you see the world from that point onward. I'd also agree that as well intentioned as these videos are they are also vastly oversimplifying the reality of how people turn out after HS. Most nerds in HS will not grow up to be multi millionaire tech giants and sometimes feel like even more of a failure when they don't reach that goal.

Interesting, but like rychan some elements didn't really click for me personally.

I never felt pressure to "be a man". I felt pressure to be a conformist. To NOT be academically engaged (ie. don't be a nerd). Some pressure to be into sports (particularly football), which is as close as I think I ever felt to "masculine" type pressure.

I ended up hating the bullies. A lot of them were jocks, so I decided I hated sports. Eventually I pretty much hated people, in general. I The difference between HS and college was like night and day (it gets better, kids), but it still took me a couple years to lower some of my defensive walls.

The bit about feeling pressure to hide anger didn't ring true for me at all. Some of the few times I felt like I was getting some respect happened when bullies pushed me or my friends far enough for me to snap. Didn't happen often, but in the two "fights" I got into in High School I was rewarded with months of calm / being left alone after them (being left alone / ignored doesn't sound great, but it was about as comfortable as I ever could get in High School).

I "won" both fights, and in both instances had to be dragged away from the bully who had started it by a teacher after causing some moderate damage (bruises up to bloody nose). No punishment for me from the administration in either case because I had zero record of causing trouble vs. the boys I had fought with being in trouble damn near constantly. I suppose that if I had lost / gotten my ass kicked it might have been different, but the (dangerous) lesson I learned was to show anger with a little earlier threshold than I normally would have done. Certainly not that I had to hide my anger. I would argue that feeling encouraged to display or even exaggerate your anger in that way is probably a more common masculine pressure than hiding it.

I definitely agree with rychan that bullying seems like a much larger issue to me, and that it doesn't seem very closely linked to masculine gender role pressure. Still, this is interesting.

Missed the whole Transformers phenom-First gen Hasbro toys hit in 84', (senior year in HS)-Back in my day, all plastic toys became blobs of melted plastic after being 'transformed' under mysterious circumstances...