My last year of high school was probably the easiest year of my life. Nearly all of my classes were electives and since I had almost all of my credits done by the end of the first quarter, I didn't really try hard for about 3/4ths of the year.
Even good old Champlin Park High School had a laissez faire attitude toward me - they forgot to schedule me for a class my second semester, second hour.
Being the dorky ass dude I was, I wanted to TA or do something that would prep me for college. But also being the notorious procrastinator that I am, I didn't let anyone know about my lack of class until like a week into the quarter. For the first week, I sat in the library and read the paper or Sports Illustrated or Time. Then I got bored.
When I let the guidance councilor know that I was sans class, I got stuck in the principals office being a secretary. It was me and a dude named Dana, where pretty much all we did was read the paper and sort mail for 90 minutes a day. Good job educational system...good job. Dana provided me with Twinkies many times, which was much appreciated by a fat kid. And even the real, not exploited as free labor at the expense of enriching a young mind secretaries took a shine to Dana and I. We got included in their holiday Potluck, which was much appreciated as a fat kid and a lover of tortilla and ham rollups.
And that's all pretty much I remember from that fateful quarter of being an 18 year old secretary. Oh yeah, and this. The TVs in our "House" office (CPHS is/was so large that a section of the alphabet had a House with its own principal and staff) played a weird mix of holiday music and songs that were almost hits in the US. The two songs that stick out for me from that time were 'So Young' by the Corrs and this. The happiest, cheesiest goddamn pop song ever. Ladies and gentleman, here is 'Bring It All Back' by S Club 7.
Seriously, I don't think anything could be that bright and nonsensical. Their song 'Never Had a Dream Come True' was the big top 10 hit in the U.S. (back when that meant something and people were still listening to radios and not just streaming everything). But 'Bring It All Back', that is my jam. And it was England's jam too, hitting #1 over there in the summer of 1999.
I don't have any other remembrances of the S Club. I know they had a TV show on Fox Family that I never watched, and I think they were some sort of Up With People multiracial collective. My only lasting memory is reading the Star Tribune, stuffing my face with Twinkies, and hearing their almost U.S. hit randomly during the winter of 2000.
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