Friday Five: Homecoming

This week's Friday Five:

1. What's the crime like in your neighbourhood? I live in a gated community full of old, retired people in the suburbs, so... it's pretty much non-existent unless you count raccoons going through the trash or nosy biddies gossiping about neighbours as crimes.
   
   
2. If you could have attended one of those high schools with a specific academic focus, such as performing arts, studio arts, sustainability, science and technology, international languages and diplomacy, or some option you thought of yourself, which would you have chosen when you were thirteen? Art and design. When I was 13, I was heavily into painting and web/graphic design (I taught myself both HTML and Photoshop when I was 11). I had my own domain to showcase my design portfolio by 14.
   
   
3. What was memorable about a party you remember from high school? Hmm... I was 17, drank quite a bit, smoked a lot of pot, and made out with a guy named Matt who was a model at the time and was hot as fuck but dumb as shit. That was my first kiss.
   
   
4. Which of your older relatives is (or was) the handsomest or prettiest? My paternal grandmother was beautiful when she was young. I've been told that my brother and I get our long lashes from her.
   
   
5. What was homecoming like at your high school? How did you feel about it? My school didn't have homecoming. At least, we didn't have an event called homecoming. (It's actually not that common in Canada.) But if we're going by the definition of homecoming as "the tradition of welcoming back former students and celebrating a school's existence," then we had a ton of homecomings. My high school holds a huge event every September called "Celebration Saturday" that's kind of like a fall festival or fair that is mandatory for current students and sees a lot of alumnae (I went to an all-girls' school) returning to the school to partake in. I remember it being pretty fun despite having to go into school on a Saturday; there were lots of midway games, auctions, bake sales, cookiegrams, pumpkin decorating, and a huge BBQ. I got sick of it the older I got, but it's a cute tradition nonetheless.
   
   There is also a huge annual inter-school sporting event called Hockey Night that consists of two hockey games, one for the rival girls' schools and one for the rival boys' schools. Almost every single person attending the four schools went to Hockey Night; some went for school pride, but most went for the legendary after-parties. Hundreds of people would attend a single after-party, and dozens and dozens of kegs were ordered for each one. Shit went down at those parties. Now, if we're talking about homecoming as a dance, my high school had semi-formal and then prom. I didn't go to semi-formal, but I did go to prom. I don't even remember my date's name now (suffice it to say, we did not keep in touch after high school), but I do remember wearing a long black dress, switching out of my heels for Converse about halfway through, being bored as fuck at the actual dance (where I did not do any actual dancing), and then going to our huge after-party where I got lit AF and then going to an after-after-party before taking a cab home when the sun was rising. (I have no idea how the fuck my parents let me do this shit.)