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My old high school hosted a reception recently to honor my graduating class from 25 years ago, sparking a flood of memories.

I hope I’m at least a little wiser than the clueless, confused geek who arrived in Thibodaux one muggy August morning in 1979.

My family had just arrived from Britain where we had spent the 1970s in Scotland and England. Although I was born in Morgan City and spent the first six years of my life there, by the end of the ’70s I’d pretty much become one of the Queen’s subjects.

My favorite sports teams? Celtic, Liverpool, Scotland and England, in that order. I pronounced aluminum as “al-you-min-ee-um.” I spoke with a British accent. I threw around the letter “u” every which way and generally attracted unwanted, pubescent attention with my colourful behaviour.

I was utterly clueless about American daily life. Something as simple as a pep rally blew my mind. Early one afternoon between classes, everyone disappeared from the building, so I roamed those empty halls with the same sense of dread and frustration that would accompany me to all subsequent math classes. Imagine my surprise to find the entire student body gathered and screaming and carrying on for the football team—all of whom were sitting in chairs facing them.

Undeterred (or simply foolish), I soon joined the ninth-grade football team, where my cluelessness continued unabated.

I put my gear on backwards. I didn’t understand how I could “jump” offside if there were 11 defenders between me and the goal line.

But it was an away game at Patterson High School that cemented my status as a foolish enigma. All the lockers were taken, so I laid my shoulder pads and helmet down in the only place left—this long, sink-looking thing. I remember wondering briefly why there weren’t any faucets, but my thoughts were cut short.

It wasn’t so much a shout as a stunned squeal of delight, and little did I know its shrill report would lodge itself permanently into the soundscape of my psyche.

“Look! Guarisco put his stuff in the urinal!”

I eventually figured things out and developed enough survival skills to be telling this story today.

And I learned years after graduating that a merciful administrator assigned a couple of bright, patient classmates to keep an eye on me—to keep me out of the urinary pitfalls of high school life, as it were.

I had to miss the reception to finish this issue of the magazine. Had I attended, I would have thanked them for helping me get out of there alive.