March 14, 2003 | 3:48 PM

Although I didn�t realize it at the time, I really liked high school. I know you�re not supposed to. I know it�s supposed to be this terrible time where if you are remotely cool you get picked on and are �misunderstood� by the population at large, but that�s not what my high school was like.

First of all, my school was voted the #1 public high school in America for many years running. It was in an upper-class suburb where everyone�s parents were doctors and lawyers and professors and political activists.

In order to be in the top 10% of the class you had to have a 4.0 GPA, and to be in the top half of the class you had to have a 3.2. I think something like 99% of my graduating class went on to college, and many many people went to ivy league schools.

I can only think of one Republican in my entire class, and he was a moderate. Everyone else was a democrat or farther to the left than that. There was a huge emphasis on the arts and on music.

I had purple hair sometimes and black hair sometimes and wore racoon eye makeup and my weight ranged from normal to pretty chubby throughout my years there, and I honestly can only remember one or two times that I was ever made fun of. I was voted Most Likely to be Famous and Most Likely to be on Broadway in the senior superlatives (how lame that I still remember that) and I was one of the more popular and well liked people in my grade. I was involved in all the plays and the drama club and the literary magazine. I was a DJ for the local independent music station and people actually listened to it and liked what I played. At any other �normal� high school my life probably would have been miserable, but I happened to luck out.

I liked a lot of my classes, and did pretty well (except in Math where I sat at the back of the class reading Anne Sexton.) I had many many friends in all different groups ranging from the arty kids that cut all their classes to the student council folks. I got along well with everyone. My senior year I was out every single night of the week until 3AM. When there were cool concerts in town, everyone would show up. Senior year was Sonic Youth and Hole and King Missile.

In order to be popular at my school, you had to be smart and talented and well read. It was a lot more like a liberal arts college than a high school. There was a massive indie rock movement and it was snobby beyond anything I�ve ever encountered since. It was not uncommon to see people in the cafeteria trotting out their boxes of 7 inches and getting into arguments over whether Slint or June of �44 was a better band.

Everyone hung out at the Little Theater, which is the independent/foreign cinema in Rochester. And at Java Joes, this arty coffee shop with live jazz music, and at Writers and Books Poetry Readings.

It was like an alternate universe where the geeks ran the school, and it was great.

Of course there was shit wrong with it. The pressure to achieve academically was outrageous. It was not uncommon for people to have nervous breakdowns if they didn�t get into Harvard. I myself remember going into a three day crying jag after having gotten waitlisted at Vassar.

And eating disorders were rampant. It seemed like everyone was bulimic or anorexic�nobody talked about it, we�d all try to fake each other out. But then I�d always run into someone at the Outpatient Clinic, each of us looking away and pretending not to see the other one. I can think of several girls who were hospitalized at one point or another.

And it also bore absolutely no resemblance to �The Real World�. It was like Central Park West relocated to Upstate New York. I have a particularly vivid memory of my friend bitching about having to go to Scotland for three weeks with her parents. Only the incredibly privileged can complain about things like that.

Still it was a great place to spend four years, although at the time I didn�t appreciate how wonderful it was.