Going back

A few minutes before I left the house, I sat there on the couch wondering whether or not I wanted to actually put forth the effort and go.  I had a talk with myself.  It wasn't one of those "Don't be lazy" or "You don't feel like going out but you don't feel like staying in either" kind of talks, but wondering exactly why I was doing this.  Months ago I got an invite to go to a junior high school reunion, and I said yes to it and marked the calendar for it.  The day had at last arrived and I was sitting in front of the TV thinking "Why am I about to do this?"  Perhaps it was sunlight deprivation syndrome since it was a cloudy, rainy day it was taking place on, which was a shame since it's been an otherwise sunny summer.  Maybe I was afraid.  But what was I afraid of?  That I haven't accomplished much in life?  It wasn't quite the same as fearing going to your high school reunion, that's a separate set of circumstances (one that prompted me to bring my handsome, fake trophy husband to in order to show the them "You see THIS?  You all are old, fat and divorced and I'm hitting THIS sweet piece of ass TEN YEARS MY JUNIOR!"), yet somewhat the same.

Alumni events seem like a loose/loose situation.  You will be spending an evening with a bunch of people you have not seen or talked to in many years, and there is a reason for it.  This is when much of the good and bad about our personalities are formed.  If you were a band geek, a cheerleader or a jock is because someone called you that and you listened and you fell into that identity because others told you that you were just that.  If you were an outcast, why would you want to spend an evening in a room full of those who thought of you as that?  Chances are you have changed since then, I know I had.  I evolved from my fourteen year old self into who I am today, and not to boast, but I do like who I am today.  If you show that you are not the person you were then to them now, they will not like you any more or less, it just shows that you have changed.  Even if I had written a best seller to be found on every coffee table across America, no one wants to talk about that best seller, they wouldn't want to talk to me today any more than they did the last they saw me.  So, yes, I said to myself, I would go.  And go I did.

I feared I would be the only one from my class to show up.  It was a small school with a small class, about half of them live in the city and others live elsewhere.  Most everyone, as far as I know, is married (or was once) and have children, except for me.  That's nothing to be ashamed of by any means, but Middle America seems to think so.  I walked the building and so much has changed in terms of the geography and set up, as it would in, what, twenty seven years since I was last a student there.  I was happy to say that I was not the only one from my class who bothered to show up, another gal LG, her brother JG, LG's son (who does not attend) and their mother showed.  I think I had met their mother once or twice during the years there, she was happy to see me and so were they.  We had a nice catch up.  I asked them lots of questions about them rather than just talk about me, keeps that certain distance between me and others.  Besides, if you talk about yourself all the time, it sounds like boasting.  And I have had and continue to have a rather exciting life, if I do say so myself, but they can deduce that from social networking.  We tripped down memory lane as anyone would in said situation.  Oddly enough, LG and I talked very little about people from our class save for two other girls and one other guy, but I did have to mention my funny story about the time I decided to make it happen with my first crush a few years ago.  This story does bare repeating ...

I had a huge, embarrassing, slobbering crush on my first love like all do and you don't know how to properly conduct themselves because you are, after all, thirteen.  Years later, I found him on Facebook and friended him.  I got to tell him first hand that he was my first love and he shaped me in ways he couldn't possibly imagine.  He wrote back and told me how he was.  He pointed out that my email might have been one of the most humbling things anyone has ever said to him.  Perhaps he wanted to forget as well, but that's understandable.  Then one day about two years ago, I turned on the Food Network and found a chef working with a tuna fish that bore his last name.  I looked it up, and it is, in fact, a particular brand of albacore tuna fish that comes from a certain breed of tuna, finely cut from the underbelly from the richest, tender portion.  It was not his family name that breeds it, as it had been in existence long before, like everyone in the world named Smith is not related.  On this summer day a few years ago, I decided "This is it!  This is the sign!  You will find him today!"  I looked up the name of the health food store in North Royalton he now owns and showed up.  I asked the cashier if the owner was there, she said he was in the back.  I said I wanted to see him.  She asked if I had an appointment, I said no.  This will sound strange, I went to junior high school with him.  She said she could get him, could she give him my name?  I said "Oh no! Don't tell him I'm here!"  She said "You had a thing for him, didn't you?"  I said "... Yes."  And he came out.  Perhaps he wondered exactly what the status of my mental health was, but I assured him I was, in fact, stable.  The first thing I said to him was "You're shorter than me."  I guess I grew.  The visit was not long, I didn't want to take him away from his work day, but I made the dream happen and that was that.  I even bought a box of quiona.  And I still have it in the cupboards.  They had a laugh about it.

When I left, I wondered still.  Exactly why did I go?  I don't want to presume to speak for everyone, but it's kind of like why we watch old episodes of TV shows.  We know they are not very good, but we want to know how the story turned out.  Humans, after all, are story telling and story loving creatures.  Although we did not know how the stories were going to turn out, we still want to know how stories end.  None of us could imagine what those stories would be twenty five years, or even five years later, but they happened and they continue to happen.  Even if I am watching a third rate movie on an airplane, I still want to know how stories end.  Stories happened and continue to happen.  LG actually said something I had never considered before, about the people that you for whatever reason keep in contact with.  Of course, if Facebook never happened, chances are none would be in contact whatsoever, that's our lifeline.  She was closer to the two girls we had talked about than I was, to be sure, she talks to them once a year if that.  Other than that, she really is not interested in talking to anyone else.  It made me realize something : Yeah, really I am not.  After all, we're different people today.  We moved on.  And some we will never know how their stories end, which is fine.  Our stories continue to be written.