Transcending 17: A Reunion Post-Mortem

When some former high school classmates started ‘friending’ me on Facebook last spring and talking about a 40^th class reunion, I was up for it although I was slightly disconcerted by this activity. Some of these new ‘friends’ hadn’t been my friends at all in high school. I would have sworn that some of them hadn’t even known I existed. I swallowed my inclination to cyber-scream this fact, and clicked ‘accept.’  After all, I argued with myself, it was high time I transcended 17.

“Let’s have it at the Rose Garden,” someone suggested, “for old time’s sake.” The Rose Garden is a bowling alley/bar/restaurant/party house in a small town a few miles from my old high school. “What old times?” I wondered, since I never experienced an ‘old time’ there. I knew it was their old time, but I said, “Sure, why not?”

This would be my first reunion. I lost track of how many there’d been – I only know that I’d never elected to go to one although on at least one occasion I was actually in town when it occurred. There was no one I really wanted to see.  And I felt sure there was no one who really wanted to see me either. I had tried hard to make myself invisible especially the last four years, and my fantasy was that I had succeeded in this endeavor.

As the months became weeks became days, my feet began to get cold. I wondered if the other three J’s would be there. There had been four of us in our neighborhood whose first names began with “J” – we rode the bus together, had pajama parties at my house, and three of the four lusted after the same guy. They had been the girls I considered my friends in high school…. someone to sit with at basketball games and in the cafeteria. Then two of them announced that, for various reasons, they were not attending. I doubted then that the third one would.  Maybe I shouldn’t go either. What was the purpose?

Everyone said I shouldn’t feel the way I felt. “You’ll see,” one friend lectured, “people are no longer who they were at 17. They’ve grown up. All those barriers that were there? Gone.” I listened but I doubted. Years of analysis have taught me that character is character.

I went out to my storage bin and scrounged around until I found the box containing my yearbooks. I plucked the one from senior year from its resting place and took it inside. My graduating class had 84 people in it. I leafed through the front pages that featured our senior pictures. I studied the faces.  There were people I had forgotten were in my class, several I remembered benignly, a few I remembered warmly, and some I preferred to forget.       

“Let’s analyze this,” I thought to myself.  What was making me think twice about going to this event? What was I afraid of? Some of the faces I had started kindergarten with, been in first grade with …. Susan, Sheila, Nancy, two Davids, Cheryl, Brian, Joyce, Ann, Christine, George, two Beverlys, Joanne, Karen, Debra, Richard, Robert, Dennis, Scott. Although I hadn’t ever been close friends with any of them, I felt in my heart that none of them harbored any animosity toward me, nor did I toward them. We all had the same kindergarten teacher, whether morning or afternoon. We ate in the same cafeteria, played on the same playground, shared the same stage during school performances up to the fifth grade. There were no fights, no gossip. But wait….. one of them had been called “flea bags” – had that been by one of those classmates, or was it one of the ‘big kids’ on the school bus? I wondered if she would be there, if she remembered that, if she had transcended that. 

Some of the faces in the yearbook I had not met until sixth grade when students from two rural schools came together, meeting for the first time in our combo junior/senior high school.  Sixth grade had been a tough year for me. I had been dealt into one of four sixth grade classes but there were only 3 of us from my old school in my class. Everyone else was a stranger to me, I did not make friends easily, and I was miserable. And to top it off, one day, as I walked by Frances’ desk, I heard him mutter “Queer” under his breath. I had just learned what that meant, sort of, and I was mortified. The stupidest boy in my class was calling me that name. I don’t think he ever said another word to me from that moment in sixth grade through graduation day, nor I to him. I wondered if he remembered that moment. Would he be there?

And then there was Nelson and his sidekick Fran. I spent junior high and senior high trying to stay under their radar. That was not easy since we shared math, science, history, and English classes together throughout. Nelson and Fran emotionally tortured two of my classmates, Bruce and Cindy, starting in junior high, making them the butt of every joke, the target of thrown objects, and the objects of ridicule. I lived in fear that they would turn their negative attention toward me. In the pecking order of the classroom, I calculated that I was only a couple of rungs up from Bruce and Cindy.  Nelson had given me a taste of his derision when I went to school one day in 7^th grade, wearing new eye glasses. “You’re not going to wear THOSE in the play, are you?” he challenged. I had been chosen as one of the four leads in the 7^th grade play, he was to play my husband. Clearly he found my new glasses singularly unattractive. Every nerve ending in my body snapped to attention. “Of course not,” I spit back at him. Though in retrospect, spitting on him might have been a more satisfying choice.

The morning of the reunion came and I sat in the chair at my hairdresser’s salon for a routine color and cut. My stomach was busy doing gymnastics. My hair dresser listened to my nervous ramblings. I told her about Nelson. “You’ll be surprised,” she counseled, “at how people have changed.” I wanted to believe her.  “You’ll have fun,” she predicted. I was dubious. Walking alone into a place full of people I didn’t know has never been my idea of a good time.

I pull into the parking lot of the Rose Garden at 6:28 p.m.  I meet the girl who’d been called “flea bags” in the parking lot. She greets me by name and smiles. We hug hello. There is Jim at the door – a welcome relief. I did not know Jim in school but we have become genuine Facebook friends and I sense he is glad to see me too. We go inside. A popular cheerleader, a member of what my friends and I called “the in crowd” hugs me long and hard at the door. I start to feel really disconnected. My fantasy world is colliding with the here and now. Thank god(dess) for Facebook, which helps me to recognize several people I might otherwise have not. I study their faces as we murmer niceties to each other, and try to discern facial elements from the past that mark them as themselves. Someone re-introduces me to Robin. I blurt out, “You grew up!” Everybody laughs.  Another person makes a joke that he grew up in height but not in behavior. I cringe inside at my faux pas.  Robin had been a very small (but mighty) guy who played a mean game of basketball. Robin is now a respectably statured and very handsome man, who later actually acts interested in whether I like living in NYC. I don’t think we ever spoke once in high school.

I spend three minutes talking to an unknown man who calls me by name. I am embraced by another woman I do not recognize but know that I should. Later, over dinner, as she references some shared experience, her name comes to me in a flash.  I find Jim and ask him who he was friends with back then. Jim is hard-pressed to come up with an answer, although as he thinks about it, he manages to cite two or three guys he was friendly with. Obviously, none of them are in his life now. I can’t imagine that he is any more comfortable in this noisy environment than I am. Over dinner, I sit beside Nancy, a friend who reads my blog and shares some of my sensibilities. I am comfortable with her. We followed similar paths, although mine’s been filled with detours. We catch up on pieces of our lives and I ask her over and over again, “Who’s that?” She has seen many of these people at prior reunions. She tells me about traveling across country with Nelson and George after high school. My heartbeat quickens as Nelson’s name rolls off her tongue.  I wonder if he is here. I don’t have to wait long to find out, as I see a man who is unmistakably Nelson stride across the room. He seems taller – he’s definitely heavier – and he’s bald. (Forgive me while I say “tee hee.”) He sweeps over to Nancy who rises and embraces him behind me.  I am still flying under his radar as he hasn’t even noticed – or recognized me as I sit beside her.

“This is bizarre,” I say to Nancy. “I feel like I landed on another planet.” I think she knows what I mean. The speeches begin. There are references to music we listened to, things that were going on in the world in 1971. The others allude to parties at George’s house and laugh about what happened on the senior trip to New York City. I do not share in any of these memories or inside jokes. Close to the end of the speeches, I notice that a slender man has taken a place by himself at the table next to ours. It’s Bruce, one of Nelson’s targets. When the formalities end, I make my way over to him and say hello, ask him what he’s been doing for the past forty years. He seems very nervous. Somewhere in my memory bank, I know that this is how he was back then. Has he been this way for 40 years, or has walking into this place done that to him? He tells me about his work, the travel he’s done. His wife sits down at the table and he introduces me. I ask if he has children and he brightens, tells me he has one of each, a boy and a girl. I tell him that I’ve thought of him many times over the years and hoped that he’d had a good life. That I remembered seventh grade, eighth grade. Bruce shrugs philosophically. He never fought back, never defended himself, just took what Nelson (and Fran) handed out as if it was his cross to bear. His father had been a minister. Maybe he’d taken seriously the “turn the other cheek” adage.  Still, I am angry on his behalf.  I remember sitting in Mr. A’s 7^th grade social studies class and wanting to scream at Nelson, “Cut it out already. Just stop!” Back then, I didn’t have the courage. Now I do.  I wonder briefly if Nelson has ever apologized. I doubt it. Character is character.

It’s 9:30 and I have had enough. I know I could just slip out the door and no one would notice I’ve gone. But I decide to say goodbye to Nancy and Jim. I know that Nancy and I will stay in touch with each other. And Jim and I have a tentative plan to meet for coffee next time I’m in town.  On my way out, I run into Kathy, a girl who made sucking noises with her teeth in disgust all the time in high school – primarily against adults. She smiles at me, engages in some brief banter, and doesn’t suck her teeth at me. Outside, there’s David smoking a cigarette. I say hi and ask him about his life. He tells me he is managing a Pizza Hut in Rochester.  We talk briefly about the lack of a work ethic among younger people these days. He seems disgusted. I turn to leave and pass Jerry (I think), who says hello to me. Another first.  

I reach my car, settle inside, draw a deep breath, turn on the ignition. My thoughts turn toward tomorrow and the long drive back home. I back up carefully in the crowded parking lot, then turn my car on to the dark rural road, and as I drive away, I fast forward forty years back into my life.