O.K. It's not really so difficult to admit that I've been out of high school for 20 years. I don't have any problem with being 38 years old - or with the passage of time. But it does seem to have gone by rather quickly. I got the invitation for my high school class reunion in the mail yesterday. Felt a bit excited because Steven Sanders had actually hand written the address. I mean a little giddy because Steven Sanders was sort of the poo back in the day. And here it is 4:15 a.m. on a Saturday morning, and I'm up blogging at the computer because I had a dream about the reunion and couldn't get back to sleep.
Now, there is a big part of me that wants to go the reunion with a vengeful spirit. Small as it is, I suppose I want someone who had everything in high school (or seemed to) to have had a really difficult life. Which doesn't seem like a very good reason to go to a reunion. The other reason would be to see old friends from high school. But I didn't really have any friends in high school. I had people that I had all my classes with. But there was no social interaction. I was never invited to a party. No one asked to hang out with me after school. David Thomas, who I have long called my only friend from high school, was the only person from high school who wrote or kept in contact - and none of that in the past 12 years or so. And Kris Michele McGill and I hung out a bit our senior year -- Pebbles Herndon my junior year. But after high school that was it - nada, finito. And I admit to having no small amount of curiousity about the people who I saw daily and thought had everything - thought perfect. The logical part of my mind realizes that they weren't perfect. I realize now, though it's hard to say it, that probably Caroline and Shelly weren't innocent virgins when they graduated from high school. But 20 years ago, I was sure that they were - mostly because people who were exemplars of the human race (as only those who are in the top clique of a school can be perceived to be) must be good and perfect. Of course, in recent years, I've spent some time indulging in watching reality mtv shows and enjoyed Laguna Beach and The Hills. I have often wondered if those girls and boys that I knew were similar to those on the screen. There's a lot of drama and meanness there - and I never got a feel for that sitting on the sidelines, looking in, that there was -- but it seems to me that if you ever get more than 3 girls together, drama will insue.
So, I can't really decide if I want to go to the reunion. In my dream, Jose, the boys, and I were eating supper at the lodge, but of course not in the reserved section for the reunion (who eats at 8:00 p.m?) And a whole parade of people began to walk by. Jim Jim Wallace (though I know he hates to be called Jim Jim now) was very tall, sporting a nice sweater and blazer. Reggie Thomas and Kenneth Wharton. I haven't thought about Kenneth Wharton since I graduated from high school - though every so often I try to find Reggie without success. Steven Sanders stopped for a hello. Michelle Guinn (who was the first person at Trigg County that I ever met) was there - but her family for some reason looked like circus clowns - literally in make-up. And the next thing I knew I was fighting back tears. Here were all these people who I didn't really have anything to say to -- didn't really have any common high school experiences -- unless you counted Beta convention or classes. And all the faces were familiar and I knew the people - but I still didn't fit in or belong -- I graduated in 1987, but was never really a member of the CLASS of 87. Although, I hold desperately to a conversation that Jim and I had the year that we were both back in Cadiz. He had come to my house (which was surreal in and of itself) and we watched Hairspray. And he told me that he always felt that I didn't need to be a part of the whole social scene at school. Which made me feel better. It made me feel like I wasn't excluded because no one liked me, but for other reasons - whatever they were. I have no idea how people remember me, or what they thought of me when I was in high school. And it's a scary proposition to go back into a group of people whose approval and attention you craved when you were younger but never got (no one was ever mean or hateful, just not opening any arms either). That's an awful lot of hurt that I don't know if I want to face or revisit (more so than I am doing right now anyway). I suppose in the long run, I have to decide if it's a thing that I'll wish I had done, if I don't. Ironically, it's probably all a moot point anyway with Franklin's soccer team. But you know me, I like to be prepared.
