The high school lunch room: Remembering “The Warrior” by Scandal

The high school lunch room may have been one of the most intimidating places in high school, for a Grade 10er at least.

It wasn’t so much there was any bullying or harassing going on. There were just so many people and I didn’t know any of them. It wasn’t like elementary and junior high where we ate in our classroom and knew everyone.

Then, one day, someone from my class, a fellow Grade 10, walked through the front doors of the school and into the lunch room, with his ghetto blaster blaring “The Warrior”.

It may have been no big deal to anyone else, but to me it is still a very vivid image. It still comes to mind when I hear the song.

Hanging out
His name was Jayson Meyers and he was a really good guy. Once he came through the front doors, with that song playing, he sat at the same table I was at and just started talking to the whole table, not any one or two people in particular.

He said he recorded the song off the radio on this tape he bought at the SAAN Store with pre-recorded music on it. It was one of those cheap K-tel-like greatest hits tapes. He said it was a perfectly good tape, so he just taped over all the K-tel selections with his own music.

One of the songs was “The Warrior” by Scandal featuring Patty Smythe.

The song
“The Warrior” was released in June of 1984 and went all the way to number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Wikipedia reveals one of the song writers, along with Holly Knight was Nick Gilder. When I was growing up he was best known for a number one hit of his own called “Hot Child in the City.”

Moving on
In second semester of Grade 10, so the early part of 1985, I stopped eating in the lunch room. I had joined the “Reach For The Top” team and they practised in the coach, Mr. Ryan’s room, over lunch hour. So I started eating there.

Eventually, we migrated to his office, and spent our lunch time there. It was a lot more fun, less intimidating, and chaotic than the lunch room.

By Grade 12, I had a licence and some of my friends did too, so we were doing other things at noon time. I had left the lunch room behind forever.

Parting thoughts
It is such an odd, but vivid, memory of Jayson Meyers walking through he doors into the lunch room with that ghetto blaster and “The Warrior” playing.

Yet, when I hear it, I am back in the lunch room at Kate Andrews High School in Coaldale in late September of 1984.

It may have meant nothing to everyone else but, to me, it symbolized the fact that no one really cared. There was no bullying, no mocking, scoffing. Some liked the song, some didn’t, and most didn’t care and went on with what they were doing.

It just made the place a little less intimidating for me.