So it's the year for
my 50th high school reunion and I remain ambivalent about whether I'll attend
or not. My lack of commitment comes not
from bad feelings about the people I might see there or the way we might judge
one another's changes over these 50 years. What I'm uncertain about is whether
I want to relive those days of teen angst again. Now so much more comfortable with myself than
I was then, I have no desire to attempt a recreation of those days as if they
were happier than I remember. I find
myself resisting, pushing away a commitment.
High School Senior Lee |
In these five decades since
graduation, I have kept in touch with the few who have remained friends through all the changes that
life has brought. We have found love and
have had our hearts broken. Through it
all, we few have been compelled by our affection for each other to make contact
in some fashion, at least from time to time.
On any given day as I think about
the gathering of those of us who dressed in robes and mortarboards to say
goodbye to high school in 1964, I think about someone specific that I would
like to see again, someone's story of the past 50 years that I want to
hear. The very next day I find myself
returning to those years when we were alternately trying just to fit in and
trying to be our own independent personages and I am reluctant to revisit the
past at all.
It was a frightening time. We were grown, but not grown-up. We were coming of age, leaving behind the
innocence of childhood and its relative lack of judgment by our peers to face
the paranoia of the teenage years. Even
as we sought to prove ourselves as burgeoning adults, the vulnerability of our
dependence on friends, parents, teachers and others for approval and protection
was still with us.
It was an exciting time, fueled by
growing in stature so that we were as tall as our parents and beginning to
believe that we were as capable as they to make decisions about our lives. Our hormones raged, drawing our bodies toward
physical intimacy with our peers while those same hormones perversely attacked
our complexions with the humiliation of acne.
We sought to attract, but found ourselves repellent, faces marred by
zits.
We were, of course, our own worst
enemies. We stared into our bathroom
mirrors, attempting to get our hair into just the right style. If we had straight hair, curls were in. If we were blessed with curls, we ironed our
hair to emulate someone deemed more popular, the pretty girls with straight
hair. If nobody asked us to the dance,
we agonized about ourselves, playing morose LP's until we fell asleep, grateful
that the event would be over when we awoke.
Our male classmates had their own
similar struggles. Only so many could
make the football team; the others had to find a different way to demonstrate
their manhood. Like the girls, most kept
any long-term dreams to themselves rather than risk the derision of their
peers. They tried so many ways to make
themselves attractive. I can almost
smell still the overabundance of Old Spice that a classmate splashed on,
probably cadged from his father's
dresser. Some found being cool in learning
to play guitar or drums to join a band. [Brad Paisley and Keith Urban released a duet
in 2004 called "Start a Band" that speaks to this.]
There were, thank goodness, those
who followed their own paths even then.
Some had musical talent and enough passion to play in the school band even
if that did not improve their "cool" ratings. Some simply couldn't quell their passion for
debate, taking unpopular positions not because they wanted to be different, but
simply because they were different.
We had limited appreciation for
different. It was okay to a degree, but
the herd mentality of adolescence sought common ground in behavior and in
attire. Our tendency was to mock
differences, rather than embrace them.
Only in retrospect do I see the hurt we must have caused and I wonder
what we missed when we chose to avoid those who were different rather than get
to know them.
In a public school where there was
no dress code, we created one of our own.
Girls who were "in" wore Villager dresses in that time when
pants were not the norm for girls. Boys
wore slacks, but not jeans to school except on the rare "jeans" days
that were allowed. A look through our
high school annuals tells a fashion tale of another time, that time before
today's "anything goes" styles.
Now reconnected to some of these
people via Facebook, I see them as they are now and I am drawn to their life
stories after high school. We've had
careers, some more than one. Some of us
have married, had children, divorced and remarried. Some of us have grandchildren and, I suppose, some have great-grandchildren. We have gained and lost weight, gained
wrinkles and lost hair. Some have
battled serious illness. We mourn some
who lost that battle.
And so I continue to waffle. Will I go to this 50th reunion and learn
where lives have taken us? Even as I
write this, leaning toward the decision to go, there is still ambivalence. It remains a choice for another day, one that
will continue to provoke reflection on a time that seems long ago and far away.
insightful and beautiful
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