When I wake up in the Morning...
By Cal Creek, Jayplay writer
I get these panic attacks. I'll lie in bed staring at the ceiling just trying to breathe. I'm scared. I'm graduating in May (fingers crossed) and it scares the holy bejesus out of me. I'm
gonna be all grown up.
For the first time in my life, I'm terrified of a transitional period. I've handled all other phases of my life fairly well. When I had to leave grade school (Prairie Elementary) for middle school (Indian Hills), I was the first to embrace the seven classes in a day. When it was time to say bye to Indian Hills and dive into high school (Shawnee Mission East), I dove headfirst, ready to swim. And when I graduated from East, no one could keep me from my funny smelling room in Hash.
So why am I so scared?
Why does this next step leave
For the first time ever there is no Saved By the Bell chapter to show me what my life should look like.
me waking up damp with sweat (I hope it's sweat)? The answer struck me the other night at 4 a.m., when I was channel surfing instead of sleeping.
When I wake up in the morning And the 'larm lets out a warning I don't think I'll ever make it on time By the time I got my books I give myself a look I'm at the corner just in time to see the bus slide by It's all right cause I'm saved by the bell...
For the first time ever, there is no Saved By the Bell chapter to show me what my life should look like. For middle school, there were the JFK Junior High years of the show (you know the seasons that take place in Indiana where Haley Mills plays Zach and Screech's home-room teacher). High school was represented by the Bayside years (The classic episodes — Zach, Screech, Slater, Kelly, Lisa and Jesse...and eventually Torrie). When we all graduated from Bayside, Zach and Screech lead us to college and coed dorms in The College Years. Zach's world represented a perfect life—
a goal that all tweens and teens wanted to achieve. Unfortunately, there is no Saved By the Bell: All Grown Up.The All Grown Up years of my life will have to be unscripted.I'll have to improv something.
When I left Prairie, I was convinced that life at Indian Hills would be wonderfully similar to life at JFK Junior High. I would have cool friends like Zach and nerdy friends like Samuel "Screech" Powers and a charming British home room teacher. The principal would roam from classroom to classroom dropping charming but silly lines.
Imagine my surprise when none of this happened. My principal didn't roam the halls making jokes with everyone, none of my friends were Zach Morris and instead of being charming and British, my homeroom teacher was intimidating and emasculating.
If Indian Hills wasn't JFK Junior High,
then I can G.D. guarantee Shawnee Mission East wasn't Bayside High. I didn't go to high school for five years; some kids from my high school did, but I didn't, and Zach, Screeec, Lisa and Slater all did. And if I had two
friends inexplicably disappear, I didn't replace them with a tough chick with a leather jacket named Torrie. And I never asked a girl to a Michael Bolton concert, and after she declined, asked my best "guy" friend. And I never dated a girl in a wheel chair and then had her break up with me because she couldn't get past the fact that I couldn't get past
the fact that she was in a wheel chair. I never formed a band with a group of friends only to have one of them freak out on caffeine pills singing "I'm so excited, I'm so excited, I'm...so scared," though I did have a friend freak out on another drug singing Hendrix's "Gypsy Eyes." And I never went to a dance off hosted by Casey Casem, though I have danced "the sprain" before.
There were so many discrepancies between The College Years and my life that I will only point out the biggest one. When I lived in the dorms, I did not have three hot coed suite mates, and my resident assistant was not an exNFL defensive lineman, he was a recovering douche bag, who often relapsed.
My point is that high school was nothing at all like Saved by the Bell. Middle School was nothing like the junior high years. And obviously, college has been so far removed from The College Years that I don't think the creators of that show actually ever attended a university.
But they did create a fantasy world that became a security blanket. Even if I knew my life would never meet the fantasy it still felt safe. Now, I'll have to turn off the television, grow up and deal with it. It's scary, but that's real life.
— Cal Creek can be reached at ccreek@kansan.com.
4.15.04 Jayplay
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