In a conversation at the Southern Tech football forum, conversations about high school came up, which reminded me somewhat of of an odd thing that’s not so odd. It turned out, people who didn’t know each other had gone to the same high school. There are roughly 150 public high schools in the greater Colosse area, and a lot of people who went to Southern Tech weren’t from Colosse to begin with, and others went to private school.

Yet, as it happens, when people who are generally from Colosse get together and start chatting, the same high schools keep coming up. Very few from Colosse Consolidated School District. Most from the suburbs. And even then, most from the “right” suburbs. I went to Mayne High School, which is very well regarded and thoroughly upper middle class or lower upper class. Next door to us is Southfield High School, which is about the same size and is a little more economically mixed.

Some of you know of Vikram Bath and others remember him by his previous name. He and I had never met until we ran across one another in blogs. And lo and behold, we went to the same high school (at the same time, it turned out, with a few friends in common). This happens with Mayne High School. Before I asked, I half-expected that we might have gone to the same high school. I almost never run across anyone from Southfield out in the wild. And even high schools that I have very limited contact with, on the other side of the city, I meet people who went there.

I’m sure it comes down to economics and class. The places I am likely to run into people are going to filter through whether or not they went to college or not, and Southfield kids go to college with less frequency. The same applies to the other high schools that come to mind, most of which are upper crest. Most of which located near their own Southfield, where I far less frequently run into someone I know.

But it has the weird effect of seeming like contrived writing. Like Colosse is a fictional city (heh) and the writers only have so many high schools that they’ve bothered to identify, so characters all come from those schools.

Somewhat relatedly, a decade ago they closed one of my middle school’s rival middle schools. Sort of. What they did was built a nice fresh new school a few miles over. They then didn’t invite any of the kids that went to the old school to go to the new school. By sheer coincidence, the new school was places do that it would mostly draw affluent kids from nearby schools, thereby giving the kids who went to old school space at some other old school. My school district really was ruthless when it came to such things.

This is going to be the subject of another post, but they’re in the process of demolishing Mayne High School and rebuilding it. Same spot, same kids going there. The district recently expanded to add two new high schools, and it just wouldn’t do for Mayne – the wealthiest – to have the second oldest facilities.