92: The One Where Anything Goes

 As our class began our senior year, we arrived with the distinction of never having won anything. I’m honestly not sure we’d even come close, but I could be wrong.  We might have come in second at one of the picnics in previous years.  But I have my doubts.  The class of 92 had not followed the normal trajectory of a class slowly rising to the top of the high school athletic hierarchy.  The juniors below were full of muscled athletes, the sophomores were coming on strong.  The freshmen, I remember little about. But what I know is that we rolled into that gym Saturday night, August 24, 1991 as perennial underdogs. 

Chris Baez, Greg Wedel, J Carlos, Steve Jeffers, and clutching our original "sacred cow" class flag at Forest Lake Academy's, "SA Anything Goes Night" ( I can't make out the person pointing at the "cow."  I think it might Les LeBrun?  I admit this photo is blurry but I looked at the original and I still can't tell)

That night was Forest Lake Academy’s annual Student Association Anything Goes Night, the first school social event of the season. The stakes were decidedly low with the series of silly games that made up the evening of inter-class competition.  Our senior class made a very 90’s move showing up with signs that indicated our utter lack of caring about the outcome of the evening. Greg, Carissa, and I penned most of the signs that made very grungy proclamations like “We’re Seniors and You’re Not”, “At Least We’re Graduating”, and “So What?”  We were very much the anti-senior class, not the big bluff heroes that I recalled from the Class of ‘89 when I was a freshman. Kurt Cobain would have been proud. We had decided to lean into our loser status and declare ourselves winners by virtue of our status as seniors. 

But then something remarkable happened.  Here’s how I recorded it in my journal:

“Tonight was the S.A. Anything Goes Night. It was awesome. Our class kicked butt the whole time. We were all really hyped for our class.  Greg, Carissa and I made signs which we waved quite proudly. Carissa, Stacy, and I went out and toilet-papered Mr. Viar’s car. All in all it was great. . .“

As the games began, we won the first contest, and then the next, and the next. We weren’t just claiming moral victory--we were actually winning.  Amazingly enough our hardscrabble hundred managed to win the night! We couldn’t quite believe it ourselves. We were delirious with joy.  It was a fun night.

I went on to note in my journal that  “There was a lot of violence this year.  A couple of brawls between the Junior and Senior classes and Seniors and Sophomore class, but we still came out on top. . .”  

I actually don’t remember these brawls and I can’t imagine they were that serious. Nobody called the cops or anything. But this too, was our class.  We had that kind of punk attitude and weren’t about to be pushed around by any of the other classes even if they were bigger and stronger than us. With Anything Goes, we’d put everyone on notice that the class of 1992 had arrived and was not to be taken lightly.

We would go on to. . .lose all the other inter-class contests for the rest of the school year.  But you would never know it. Every one of those so-called losses were a massive victory as far as we were concerned.  What we lacked in ability we more than made up for in indomitable spirit.