The idea of coming back years later, a huge success and showing off to those who had vexed me in high school; has always been very appealing. I remember thinking even at graduation, that I would come back in a limo or some fancy car with photographers taking my pictures, personal bodyguards and seeing everyone who would want to kiss up to me. I would be a superstar of some sort. Perhaps a famous actor or rock star.
I have always had my head in the clouds a bit, I will admit that. Growing up I wanted my family to be more like the perfect TV families I loved, and my vision and expectation of what my big high school reunion would be like has forever been set in stone since watching Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion.
So when none of that was going to happen on the last big number class school reunion; I kinda skipped it. Apart from not being able to make the huge splash, my pie in the sky imagination demanded, but mostly from the real fear of saying something extremely cunning and satisfying to people who had vexed me as a weird awkward and misunderstood teenage homo.
But now many more years later, I found myself in a weird position as the next big date reunion appeared. Now that I am older, more mature, a father and former international world leader. My imaginative expectation of what should happen was now, perhaps, a bit lower. Perhaps things have changed, perhaps I have changed enough to go back and see what I loathed so much when I was a young teenage thing.
So when I noticed on the the PAA website that the Alumni weekend was only a week away, I became a bit nostalgic. Blame it on male PMS or whatever (Joshua blames the full moon), I found I wanted to walk the old halls again. Yes, a little bit of me still wanted to pour gasoline on the floors of those hallways and strike a match or two, but there had to be a few good memories of the forgotten past to explore. The more I thought about it, the more I knew it was the latter and not the former, so I felt I could attend without any kind of prison time occurring afterwords. The one thing I really did dread, was seeing anyone hateful. Again, mostly for the fear of my mouth opening or worse holding my tongue and adding another high school related moment of regret and trauma to my addled brain.
First I did a shout out on Facebook to see if anyone from my class was going, because it’s no fun being a Romy without a Michele (and vice versa). The responses I got back should have been my first warning:
“Not on my list of fun things to do”
“Mmmmmmm, gonna have to go with nope….. “
“Connecting with friends sound FABULOUS, walking back thru the gate….next to impossible.”
I started pestering Josh to see what he thought. It was pretty clear he was NOT supportive of the idea and he had no interest in attending a Adventist church service in a gymnasium. After a million years as a Roman catholic alter boy, he has done his jail time. I really didn’t blame him for not wanted to attend with me as the happy homo spouse. So… Without any confirmed classmates attending I threw caution to the wind and left the decision to a 7 year old and asked Jayme if he wanted to go see my old school. The weekend’s events started off with a concert evening with the school band and choir performing. Jayme loves music so at the worst, at least he would have a good time. I picked him up from school on Friday afternoon and asked him if he wanted to good see my old school that night. I got a short, NO. Well that was that. Joshua didn’t want to go and now neither did Jayme. And there was no way I was walking in there alone. At least with Jayme I could use him as a cuteness shield.
But as luck would have it, following video game time, Jayme changed his mind. We jumped in the car and headed over to the school. I drove up to the front door only to find it was locked. I quickly checked my iPad to see if I had the right time and date. Information confirmed, we drove around the block looking for an entrance. The old side gateway I snuck out of for so many lunches, was shut and padlocked. Seems since my time, they have opened a new gate as the main entrance, located all the way on the south side of the school. Entrance found, we parked and headed in. Walking up to the check in desk, we were greeted by some teenagers (assumed they were seniors) and they checked us in and I was given a very fetching name badge with a color photo with my old senior picture upon it… With my wonderful mushroom bowl shaped 90’s hair.
Curse of the Fuchsia
The concert was not for an hour, so the two of us toured the school.. alone. The school website mentioned that there were going to be tours, but no one was leading any. Which was fine by me. I showed Jayme my old lockers (which he wanted to open) and we looked into every classroom. We headed down the honor wall area and found my classes photo frame. I even pointed out my mother’s photo from 1960 something (mushroom hair seems to run in the family). The one thing missing was the schoolmates and teachers. NO one from my class was present and no teachers. The school was empty.
At 7:00 p.m. the concert began. The gym was mostly filled with parents of the preforming students. Jayme and I sat down near the band and listened to the show. Miss Neel and the band came out first. Miss Neel was my choir teacher when I was attending PAA, so this was a blast down memory lane. The band wore all black, a color I was very impressed with. Back in my day we all were forced to wear bright floral polyester fuchsia. They did have a touch of the fuchsia curse with pink ties, but it was a huge improvement. Plus, there is nothing wrong with a little manly pink.
Jayme loved the band, as with other musical events that he has attended, he ate it up. He spent the evening parroting Miss Neel’s hand motions as she directed the band, only jumping a few times when the cymbals crashed.
After the band performed, the school choir came out. It seems that they had not escaped the PAA fuchsia curse. Snow-white polyester dinner jackets, light pink shirts, bright blinding pink bow ties and black polyester pants. My heart wept a bit for them.
Once the concert ended, Jayme wanted to meet Miss Neel, who was nice but clearly, she did not really remember me. Not even with my wonderful name badge with my senior picture upon it… With my wonderful mushroom bowl shaped 90’s hair. As a friend said in a Facebook post, perhaps she did not recognize me out of my fuchsia. She was very nice and made a nice effort to talk with Jayme, but then beat a hasty retreat (perhaps she did remember me LOL).
So that was that, reunion done. I had no wish to attend the church service the next day and Jayme could not attend anyway due to T-Ball practice. But… On the way home, all Jayme could talk about was how he loved my school and wanted to come the next day if it was raining and T-Ball was canceled. He had also found a Big Lake brochure and wanted to go to camp and go to MY high school when he was older. So with all of his excitement, the two of us made a plan. I would attend the church service the next day (OMG) and we would get Joshua to drop him off after T-Ball practice.
So Saturday morning I cooked Jayme’s breakfast and headed to my closet for my suit (which was too big, yeah for losing weight!). I had to borrow a smaller belt from Joshua to keep my dress pants up. Joshua and Jayme headed off to T-Ball and I headed off to dear old PAA.
Wasted paper at the check in desk
I arrived and looked around. Hmmmm… No one I knew, the coast was clear. Being casually late, I assumed I would sneak in – not be noticed – find the cool people – and sit next to them. Well it turned out I “was” the cool people.
The gym was laid out with all the class honor years highlighted and seated in the middle of the room under very large signs showing their graduating year. Every year had a small to large group huddled around their sign. But when I looked across the room to my class’ sign, it was a lonely wasteland. So dateless and alone, I headed over to my class’ area and plopped down. Why the heck was I here again? I sat alone and a became little desperate for those vexing people to show up and distract me with their perceived hateful stares. The belt holding my oversized pants was starting to dig in to my side. My arms were getting all sweaty under my tent-like suit jacket and did that woman on stage just ask everyone from my class to stand??? Oh God…. she did.
So now I stood, alone as the whole gym filled with geriatrics and bored high school students stared at me and applauded my special efforts to keep my pants up, I mean showing up. Thankfully once the applause ended, the lady on the stage asked for all the classmates from the 1990’s to stand up with me, so I would not be alone. I start looking around the room, then the whole room start looking around the room as well. No one was standing up with me. So round two of applause begins for me and me and my belt, the sole representative the of the 1990’s, as my belt was new right from China.
Shortly after my two moments of heady fame, Joshua texted that he and Jayme had arrived outside and were waiting in the parking lot. So I headed out to meet them. After a short exchange, we did the hand off. Then Joshua ran for his life and Jayme and I headed in. Once back down in the wasteland of my class’ reserved seating area, Jayme got a feel for the overwhelming excitement of an SDA church service, in a gym, while sitting on PUA metal-folding chairs. It only took about 10 minutes for him to declare that he was bored to tears and honestly, so was I. This was not what I was hoping for. I was looking forward to talking to old buddies, cracking jokes, and exchanging stories throughout the service. Having to sit up and pay attention like a real grown-up… no no no.
So Jayme and I headed outside to run around and play a bit. As we left, we saw Miss Neel, who smiled and waved, perhaps she does remember me. We headed out the backdoor towards the covered passageway to the art department. It was a bit surreal standing there watching Jayme run back and forth down the cloister that I use to walk each day. Thoughts of old friends, teenage enemies and cool teachers fill that walkway.
We killed time until the service was over, playing in the soccer field. Following the service was the potluck. Jayme REALLY wanted to eat lunch in the cafeteria for some odd reason. Even the promises of a store bought pizza would not even budge him. So we hung around and waited…
Official Class Photo
From the stage, they announced that the offical class photos would be taken before lunch and for the honor classes to follow their class year signs. Jayme and I slowly walked over and thanked the teenage girl, who stood alone with us holding our class’ sign. They offered to take the full class photo of just the two of us, but I quickly declined, remembering what a Facebook classmate predicted how VERY sad a one person class photo would be. But I took a few funny photos of Jayme playing with the sign, which he loved and hammed up.
They soon announced that lunch was served and we entered into the cafeteria. Years ago (eons ago when Ellen DeGeneres walked the earth with Dinos and Bill Nye the Science Guy) I used to work a shift in the school kitchen. It was then, I was privileged to work with the greatest school lunch lady/sabbath school teacher/pathfinder leader and mom; Mrs. Tate. It seemed a bit sacrilegious to be served store-bought Stouffers Lasagna from her kitchen. But we got our plates and found a seat, sitting at the back table where I use to sit with all of my old crowd. It was here at lunch I really noticed how differently Joshua and I, have been raising Jayme from the way I was raised.
Jayme asked if he could have some chips with this lunch. I told him they were not serving chips. Then he pointed to a vending machine next to us, “You can get me those chips.”. Now how do you explain to a child, who is hungry, about Seventh Day Adventist Sabbath Dogma? How do I explain the look of shock and disapproval that would explode from a room full of Seventh Day Adventist Octogenarian’s slurping up their Stouffer’s? I sat there for a moment and thought. Was Jayme better off or worse for not having these customs thoroughly programmed into him? Deep, unexpected thoughts now began churning in my head; all on a day that was supposed to be just a fun day, down memory lane. Well, I wanted to be a parent. I leaned down and told him, that this was a church school and one of the church rules is no buying or selling on Saturdays. He was a bit miffed and really didn’t understand.
As I sit here writing this, I really marvel that even years down the road from my own days of daily indoctrination in the SDA church: My programing still stands, still a good manchurian. What is the worst they could they have done to me if I stood up and bought Jayme some chips? It’s not like I knew any of them or would ever see them again. Or that Jesus would even care, he would have made chips fall from the sky. Oh dear, a new high school regret to carry around for all time. Oh… how I now wished I would have bought those chips.
Great! A new high school REGRET! Well… At least now, I know what to do at the next reunion… Bring quarters.