Sunday, February 12, 2006

High School... 20 Years Later

It wasn’t as if the year 2005 escaped my notice for monumental rites of passage, the grand finale being my 20th High School reunion.

Since I flat out refused to attend my 10th, so averse was I to anything alumnus related, I had been dropped from the invite list. It wasn’t animosity, rather a “been there, done that and didn’t need to go back” feeling. I didn’t have a horrible teenage experience; on the contrary, it was pretty garden variety. Like most peoples’, life at Lincoln Sudbury began on two left feet, but I survived. There were a lot of good days and few bad ones. I skipped school and drove to Wingaersheek Beach, pulled pranks and fire alarms, had great friends, took all the classes I wanted and graduated in three years, racing to get through high school, so that I could race through college so that I could start my fabulous career. I barely had time for boyfriends. In fact, now that I think about it, I didn’t really even have boyfriends. O.K., I dated D***Mc for a few months my freshman year, but he barely got a kiss, our “relationship” consisting of a lot of sweaty handholding. The following year, I “went out” with Dickie C., a gymnast, Gemini and a senior. “Going out,” meant we sat on the hallway floors, talking about God and ESP. It seemed so sophisticated. He drove a beat up ’69 burgundy Firebird convertible. We’d turn the heat up and put the top down, winding through the back roads to White’s Pond, where we’d wade around in the moonlight, continuing our oh-so-serious conversations. This went on for about two months before he reconciled with his ex-girlfriend, a wispy actress from Lincoln. Tristan and Isolde was what he compared their love to. Our evening swims were anything but passionate, and I took the break up pretty well. I mean, there weren’t any historical make out sessions, just a lot of talk. (In the years that followed, however, he’d somehow track me down and we’d engage in long, late night phone philosophy about our connection and question if we belonged together. In 1991, he called to tell me he was in New York for a long weekend working as a carnie. He arrived at my Astoria apartment a few hours later, sold me long distance service and disappeared into the night. That was the last time I saw or heard from him).

The point is, love did not figure into my plan, and I handled the subject rather rationally, wise beyond my years. Didn’t I have all the time in the world for love? Why would I want to waste these valuable years on someone I know I’m going to leave for the Big Apple?

So although I can’t recall the impetus, I jumped at responding to the invitation my pal Suzanne forwarded and encouraged my girlfriends to join me. While they grumbled that I owed them, I took a long awaited opportunity to remind them of the silent treatment they invoked, forcing me into attending the Class of ‘83’s Senior Prom with a friend of their boyfriends. Awkward and resentful, I’m confident I ruined whatever high school fantasy he imagined about back seats and motel rooms, insisting that he take me home and spending exactly five minutes making out in my driveway before I was sure my mother would flick on and off the lights, our signal for me to get the hell out of the car and in the house.

But back to November 25, 2005. Location: the Crowne Plaza, Route 9 Framingham. It surprised me that class of ’85 hadn’t aged at all, and I thought, could this is the fountain of youth? Surrounded by people you grew up with, you could forever retain the same childlike countenance through their eyes. Everyone seemed genuinely happy; there was a buzz about the room, as if we were waiting to march down the hill to the football field in that late May afternoon of graduation. As the hours flew by, I hated for the evening to end, imagining myself joining the committee for the next reunion, and perhaps persuading them to plan a three-day retreat. I know, that sounds ridiculous, but I was caught up in a euphoric energy; brought on by the keen absence of high school insecurities, and wanted to stay put. I knew these people. Lincoln Sudbury Regional High School (or Drinking Drugsbury Reasonably High School as some liked to call it) was no different than any other. It could have been a scene right out of the iconic high school movies chronicling the 70s and 80s like Dazed and Confused or The Breakfast Club. We had the same Madonna look-a-likes, computer nerds, jocks, rats, (smokers clad in denim jackets) and motor heads populating the hallways. And with those stereotypes, some things don’t change. Not a few of our former cheerleaders had become classic suburban hard-bellied moms, MILFs if you will, donning tight designer jeans and revealing shirts, accessorized with an accordion packet of their progeny. A slide show projected, among other snapshots, our former class president’s virtual photo album of over-achievements. There he was hiking the Appalachian Trail, climbing Mount Everest, biking the Tour de France route, running the Boston Marathon, surfing in Tahiti. And there were a lot of family photographs. Most of the attendees were settled into a lifestyle I never had time for.

Much can happen in twenty years. Nobody knows the glorious triumphs, spectacular failures and tragedies we’ve lived over the past two decades, but that banquet room was a safe harbor. I felt a kinship to my fellow graduates. There is something important about these relationships, and perhaps it is the shared adolescent experience of surviving the roughest, toughest part of growing up, puberty, and we’ve made it. And by being in this presence, even years later, you reveal everything. The bond has stuck.

I’ve started keeping in touch with a few that I hadn’t seen since graduation. One of them reminded me that I ran around with a “tough crowd”. The fact that I was a real prude may surprise you. I was almost always the designated driver, dubbed “the Big V”. (Figure that one out yourself) and all around parent’s favorite. It was an exciting time. I’m always envious of kids flying the coop for college. It is an exquisite feeling, ankling the house for the first time when you are ready, really ready, to be on your own. I know parents must get squirrelly about their kids leaving the nest, but I hope for them to appreciate the independence and excitement their kids are experiencing. Mine weren’t worried about me at all. In fact, they began giving me luggage when I was sixteen, but I didn’t mind. I wanted to leave. I minded later when I found myself in a therapist’s office wondering why she was telling me I had abandonment issues. By 25, I was working twelve hour days and getting four hours of sleep, hitting bars and after bars, way up to my eyeballs in credit card debt and student loans, loving life but at the same time wondering why it was all so hard, wishing I didn’t have to have the worries. Did I want to be an adult way too fast? Is this why I find myself trying clothes on in the junior department, looking at my reflection, silently saying to myself, “Wow, I am almost 40. I can’t be wearing this Roxy jacket”.

As I walked in and out of conversations in that generic banquet room, Prince’s “1999” in the background with the Madonna girls on the dance floor, I was reminded of what I felt at 17. At the top of my game. Cocky. Smart. I was getting out of town and nothing could stop me. Here, in 2005, club soda in hand, I flit in and out of conversations and silently take in how people remembered me, like when I hit the road for NYC, I was going places. If only we could see ourselves as other people see us, harness that and keep for personal reflection when the going gets rough. Turning down an offer for a ride home from a former class mate and soccer hottie, I take my place as the designated driver and through the frosty night, I realize that I still am going places. I am at the top of my game again.

Reunion 2005
Originally uploaded by beautykat.

Shameless Crushes...

find life experiences and swallow them whole.
travel.
meet many people.
go down some dead ends and explore dark alleys.
try everything.
exhaust yourself in the glorious pursuit of life.
-lawrence k. fish

Yoga For Peace

read much and often

Cleopatra: A Life
Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Never Let Me Go
The Angel's game
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Bel-Ami
Dreaming in French: A Novel
The Post-Birthday World
A Passage to India
The Time Traveler's wife
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Catcher in the Rye
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Kite Runner
Eat, Pray, Love
Slaughterhouse-Five
Les Misérables
The Lovely Bones
1984
Memoirs of a Geisha


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