I think I had a different high school experience than a lot of my peers. When the reunion committee asks, “What was your favorite after school hangout?” mostly people mention fast food restaurants or the mall. I’m all, “My house? No, wait, play rehearsal.”

First, I didn’t have a car.

Second, I genuinely can’t imagine being able to just go and hang out somewhere after school. As I remember it, I would (in 9th & 10th grade) ride the bus or (in 11th & 12th grade) be dropped off by a friend, always at home. I might watch Animaniacs and Batman: the Animated Series, but then I’d get right to homework. And then I’d have dinner and head to rehearsal.

I have no regrets about living in theaters in high school.

The other thing though as I think about it is that if I wasn’t home, who was going to hang out with my siblings? My mom was so sick with pernicious anemia and hypothyroidism, she barely had the energy to get out of bed. (I have worked very hard to make sure this isn’t my adult life. She didn’t have the access to information that I do.)

My brother was ages 1 - 4 when I was in high school and childcare was prohibitively expensive. Was I going to make my 9 - 13-year-old sister care for him? No. Was I going to consign her to a fate of waiting in after school care until my dad could pick her up? Definitely not; we’d lived that life when I was in elementary school and our school’s after care felt very sad.

So I didn’t go hang out anywhere until my dad got home from work, and then I went to rehearsal. Usually he drove me, but sometimes a friend did.

I had such a bad experience in driver’s ed and driving with my permit that I didn’t get my license until I was 20. So there’s a real sense of freedom that my peers had at 16 that I just didn’t.

But even if I’d had my license: we had one car. If I’d gotten a job to buy a car, the childcare question would come up again. (I just realized that of course my mom had to care for my baby brother during the day, so now I’m thinking that’s where all her spoons went. She had to save her energy for that.)

Anyway, yeah. My favorite after school hangout was our futon I guess until my dad got home and could take me to the theater, my actual favorite after school hangout.

But my favorite weekend hangout?

That was the library.