Last Friday evening upon settling down into our recliners at the end of our respective busy days, my wife and I watched a movie that she had picked up from Redbox on her way home from work. For lack of a more appealing choice, she had selected the movie, "Ten Years". The plot of this film was not a terribly original one. It was yet another foray into exploring that ever so awkward exercise in nostalgia that we call...the high school reunion.
In this flick, trendy and, so I am told, hunky heart throb, Channing Tatum, a guy I would be more inclined to describe as "that dude who plays characters that come across as lovably and disarmingly dim", plays the lead in a cast of high school chums who reunite for their ten year reunion, a celebration of their high school "glory days" that are rapidly slipping through their fingers as careers, marriage, children, responsibilities, expanding waist lines, receding hairlines, the appearance of the first gray hairs, and an assortment of other adult "issues" begin to suck the remaining life from their rapidly fading youth. In a rather predictable plot line, Tatum, who is accompanied to the party by the love of his adult life, encounters his old high school flame, a girl with whom he clearly has loose ends longing to be tied up. The subsequent, "on screen" tension that manifests itself as the "used to be" couple confronts the lingering embers of first love was palpable.
Against the backdrop of this central conundrum of the former "it couple", an array of other subplots revealing the problems, flaws, and unrequited loves of other classmates are weaved into the tale and followed to climax. When all was said and done, "Ten Years" was an okay movie. It was occasionally humorous, moderately entertaining but not at all brain-draining. Simply put, very easy on the mind which, at the end of a long, busy week, is not at all a bad thing, I think.
My takeaway from watching "Ten Years"? Well, what really got my attention had little, if anything at all, to do with the commonness and calculability of the storyline or with the familiarity and flaws of its characters. No. Instead, it was the feelings that watching this fictional portrayal of the final right of passage out of youth and into adulthood gave rise to inside of me that made watching it simultaneously salient and disconcerting.
And just how was that? How did it make me feel? Well, let's see. Raw. Uncomfortable. Vulnerable. Vicariously nervous, though on the outside looking in at an imaginary event. All in a very visceral way. Watching it just made me feel, well, you know...all "teeny bopper" inside. It was a little like imagining what it would be like to have a time warp encounter with your adolescent counterpart...on his or her very worst day.
The vexation that this feeling, having watched this fairly mundane movie about a pretty commonplace event in the lives of a group of imaginary strangers, caused me to experience is particularly weird in light of the fact that I have never even attended one of my own class reunions to even have feelings about the experience, good or bad. Since graduating almost forty years ago, I know that there have been at least a couple of them. I have always been aware of the benchmarks when they rolled around; it's not as though they just slipped by me without notice. I even recall receiving invitations. But as the dates for these class convocations drew near, I always managed to say to myself at the last moment, "You know, I think I'm gonna' pass."
I pride myself on being fairly introspective, self aware and self-critical. Admittedly, I see myself as very flawed. And I think that I am keenly aware of most of my foibles. But this question has plagued me and begs an answer, "Why?" Why do I not go? What am I hiding from, what am I avoiding by choosing not attend what should be a cherished opportunity to see those old (as in many years ago) familiar faces, to renew old friendships, etc., etc., etc.? Why I am a so reluctant to attend? I've never really understood my squeamishness.
Well, after watching this semi-enjoyable yet most mediocre movie, which I am quite certain will garner no artistic accolades, the answer to my query became painfully clear. You see, it's really not all that complicated. That feeling, that somewhat nauseous nervousness that I welled up inside of me as I watched these fictitious friends, in all of their feigned adult splendor, maturity and wisdom, grappling with lingering insecurities and unfinished business from days gone by that for many like myself might be better left buried and forgotten...that feeling is exactly why I have avoided attending previous reunions like an STD. I just don't want to dredge up and revisit all of that suppressed teenage angst...I just don't want to go there and be that kid again. Just don't.
You see, while I really don't want to host a "poor me" pity party (though it may sound like it...well, maybe I do), I just don't remember high school all that fondly. No "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times" for me. Largely, I just remember high school as being somewhat lonely and painful. Too few buddies, relationships that ended in heartbreak, and very little healthy socialization outside of school left scars which have affected me into my adult life. Sure, with maturity and with the passage of time, I have overcome some things. For instance, I am blessed with the love of the most beautiful person, to whom I have been married for almost eighteen years now. But some of the rest of it? Not so much. To this day, building and maintaining friendships remains laborious for me. Sometimes, like even at the men's morning bible study at church where the climate is totally accepting and caring, I feel socially inept, like a social misfit of sorts. Out of place, like I don't belong. Either, I am socially maladjusted or perhaps just plain ol' not very likeable. Or maybe just paranoid.
Remember the Nazareth song, "Love Hurts"? Well, in high school, love hurts double. As long as I can remember, I have been a hopeless romantic. Not really sure why. However unhealthy it may be (you know, "you have to love yourself before you can love another", "you are only responsible for your own happiness", etc.), I think that I have always measured my own self worth by whether or not I perceived myself as "worthy" of another's love. Thinking this way, of course, is an equation for certain calamity during one's formative high school years. During high school, my heart was completely crushed a couple of times, likely more the fault of my clingy, overly serious, overly sensitive, suffocating nature than it was the fault of the girl. Regardless, my already fragile self-esteem (reference earlier blog on lifelong battle with being overweight) was obliterated. Beyond a tiny handful of other brief and oh so temporary flirtations and crushes during those years (which also ended with me on the short end of the romantic stick), for the most part I was not only "single" but dateless. I can recall so many agonizing minutes, even hours, spent staring at the telephone, too petrified to pick it up, dial it and ask someone out on a date. And when I finally did? Oh, the relief I felt when no one answered. It was almost better than having a kidney stone removed...and way better than being rejected. In the hallways of my memory, these were dark times.
What about friends? I had friends, but the vast majority of them were what I refer to as "school" friends, people that I saw and interacted with at school each day but rarely, if ever, outside of the school setting. During high school, I wasn't involved in many extracurriculars (again, no one's fault but my own). Eventually, these normal, high school activities that most participate in funneled most of my childhood friends from church, from Scouts, from sports or from the 'hoods into new social circles. There were a small few guy friends that I intermittently did things with, but for the most part though, I was more or less a lone wolf...or a lone something. During these years, I was fortunate, however, to have been blessed with a handful of "sister friends", close female friends (who probably wouldn't have gone out with me either had I asked them) who were, for all extent and purposes, my social life line during these otherwise lonely years. But day in and day out, I was pretty much alone. When I wasn't, my recollection is that, more often that not, I initiated the interaction.
In every high school class, there are the party animals? Well, that group certainly include me. My cousin, whom I grew up with, and attended school with throughout childhood and youth, and love dearly, has lots of pictures from various parties that different classmates threw throughout our high school years. If you peruse them, you will find that I am conspicuously absent. Sure, I did a couple of military balls and one prom, but beyond that, I can't recall ever being invited to or attending a single, non-school related party, big or small, formal or informal, during my time in high school. There were never any weekend evenings spent in the parking lot socializing with friends out at Northside. You know that "You Know You're From Thomaston If" page on Facebook? I have heard contemporaries talk about social venues in Thomaston that they have fond memories of from high school that I have never even heard of, much less been to. For Pete's sake, I have never even been on Potato Creek or to Sprewell Bluff. I mean like ever. I have never even been inside of the clubhouse at the Thomaston Country Club. The long and the short of it was that I just never "hung out" very much, never had much of anyone to "hang out" with, and never ever "hung" with anyone that hung out at many of those places that I hear so many people reminisce about.
Nope, the essence of my recollections of those high school years can be summed up in this memory... hour upon hour spent just "riding around" Thomaston, Georgia...alone...burning gallon upon gallon of gas in my car as I pretended...no, fantasized that I was actually "socializing"...just to get out of the house for awhile and to escape feeling alone and isolated. To this day, even though there have been some changes there, I think that I could drive the streets of Thomaston blindfolded. To this day, I still feel alone.
So the thought of going to a high school reunion, of filling out that name tag, of walking through that door, of awkwardly pretending to be glad to see people that I barely knew or, even worse, forgetting the names and faces of people that I did know, of having to think of something to say or talk about (a master of small talk I am not)?...well, all of that just kind of gives me the heebie jeebies.
I can see just myself , once the assemblage settles down and people, as they inevitably will, begin to divide themselves into the same cliques that they identified with as teens, I can just picture myself milling around clumsily, aimlessly moving from perimeter of one pod to the next, watching and listening to people talk and laugh about the "good ol' times" that they remember, while I vacuously grin and nod as though I remember them too. Nah, I can't. I really just can't see it at all.
But that was then and this is now, you say. We have all grown up, matured, mellowed, changed. Yeah, well, maybe. But I think that in the recesses of our psyches, hiding out in the shadows of our minds, our adolescent alter egos are still lurking, waiting for the opportunity to resurface and to antagonize us. At least mine, anyway.
Now I can understand how, for some, reunions could be fun occasions. Those who thrived in high school, the popular-ratzi if you will, who had lots of friends, successes and positive experiences might find the reunion experience a welcome homecoming, a return to the "glory days", either real or imagined, that Bruce Springsteen so cynically sang about. Or for other "pop'lars", if lady luck has been unkind to them in adulthood, the reunion might provide a place of solace, a place where he or she can once again, if only in their memories, be, as Toby Keith lamented, "as good as I once was".
For people like me, however, for whom those years are remembered far less glowingly and for whom, fortunately (or at least hopefully), we were not the best we would ever be (or maybe sadly we were), the prospect of attending this "deja vu revue" that we refer to as our class reunion may be most scary and foreboding. The scenario is ripe with potential for ripping open and making raw again old, slow-healed scars and, in the process, feeding festering fears, unearthing skeletons or dirt that has been painstakingly buried or finding psychological baggage that was long ago to left behind in the dust of life's journey. You know, sometimes in life it is simply better not to look back. Don't look back over your shoulder...just keep on moving. The fact is that sometimes you just can't go home again.
Over the last three years or so, however, my frigidity toward the prospect of ever attending a reunion has begun to thaw...just a little bit. Surprisingly, this glacial defrost is largely attributable to the advent of social media. I never thought that beginning a Facebook page, a decision that I arrived at most reluctantly and skeptically, would have had such an impact. Like most, as "people you may know" showed up on my page and those of schoolmates, I have gradually become part of a small network of people from my hometown that I was in the same class with or whose high school experience overlapped mine at some point. A few were "friends", many were "acquaintances", some I really only knew who they were, and vice versa, and a few I couldn't really place at all but was too polite to ignore their friendship requests.
The odd thing about this Facebook experience has been that some of the "friends" that I was fairly close and was most excited about reconnecting with via the platform I rarely interact with at all. There could be any number of reasons why this has been true: they don't really use Facebook very much, maybe our friendship was more or less unilateral and we really weren't as close as I thought or remembered, or they've moved on and just don't see the point in expending the energy rekindling our friendship either because of distance and the passage of time or because they simply don't want to add to the clutter of their current lives. I know that sometimes I am of that latter ilk. Or perhaps it's because they have a real life and I don't...lol. I don't know.
To my surprise, however, many of the people that I have drawn close to, at least virtually, through the miracle of this social platform are people that I really only barely knew back in the day and with whom I had very little, if any, significant interaction. We just barely brushed by one another in our lives back in the day. Some of the people that I interact regularly with online today, people that are really only "cyber-friends", are, however sad it may be, my best friends, given the fact that almost forty years removed I remain pretty much "socially challenged" (today's politically correct term for my disability) and very few tangible friends . During the course of my week, I look forward to reading their thoughts, hearing their opinions, seeing what's going on in their lives, what their likes and dislikes are, chatting with them , and sharing these things in my own life in return. As fantastic as it may have seemed a decade or so ago, these "computer chums", many of whom I haven't seen in decades since leaving home shortly after graduation, have been woven into and have become an integral part of the fabric of my "real" life. I truly think of them as my friends and treasure the new connections. They are "virtually", at least, such wonderful and caring people. So in the present, if there is any pull, any pull whatsoever, to attend a reunion, it is more likely the prospect of bringing these virtual friendships into the realm of reality than it is revisiting "glory days" that never were and reopening baggage that has been long packed away.
So I would go to one now, right? To actualize these new, virtual friendships, right? Well, doing my best Lee Corso, "Not so fast, my friend!" What all of this means is that I have invented an entirely new twist on having reservations about attending my high school reunion, a new age "reuniphobia", if you will. Now, new apprehensions gnaw at me and cause me to be dubious of the wisdom of taking such a big leap. Would it be worth taking the risk, to actually lay eyes on my long distance buddies and have real rather than written convos? Or would the experience have a boomerang effect, one that was the opposite of what I had envisioned? I mean if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? Why ruin a good thing, perfectly good cyber-friendships for one face-to-face evening or weekend? Why rock the boat and risk finding out that, in real life, you are really aren't all that simpatico or that hanging out online is more copacetic than really hanging out...in person. Do I really need to find that out, to turn my existing social world upside down? I don't know. I just don't know.
The scuttlebutt is that this summer our high school is having one of those mutli-year reunions. You know, the ones where there either isn't enough interest in any one class or, at our age, not enough survivors to have one per class (how exactly do the organizers determine which classes are to be included in these things? And what happens if someone from a class beyond or below the established class cluster shows up?...but I digress). Fear, the old faithful and familiar one of confronting a not so pleasant or memorable past, chancing the excavation all that old, adolescent weltschmerz, intermingled with the new found nightmare of possibly upsetting the apple cart of my existing social architecture, such that it is (regardless of how dysfunctional or delusional it may be in reality, it's what I got), stands in my path as an obstacle to my getting out there and "hanging out" with some buds before it's too late.
Hm-m-m-m-m. What to do? What to do? If I go, what will it be like? Will it be like it was in "Ten Years" or "Peter's Friends" or "The big Chill", will it just turn out to be a be weekend awash in tense undercurrents of old competitiveness, drama, and secrets; of regrets and disappointments, past and present, dressed up, covered up in nice clothes, feigned laughter, small talk and pretense. Or could taking a chance and going be an opportunity to really get to know, really connect "eye to eye" with the new, adult versions of dear, old friends and to strengthen and deepen the new connections made over distance with people that, for whatever reasons, you didn't get to know way back when. Is it conceivable that with the maturity and grace developed over years and life experience, that with the changed perspectives and reordered priorities of what is really important that accompany the aging and maturing process that attending might turn out to be a marvelous and memorable experience that ultimately enriches the final chapters of my life.
I mean I wanna' go...I do. But then I don't. Call me "scary", if you want. Today? It's a coin toss. Perhaps to allow myself the opportunity to make an impartial, unemotional decision, I should avoid listening to the Springsteen channel on Sirius or watching any other reunion movies for a while.
Wait a minute. What do you think Romy and Michelle would do in my situation?
"...Glory days well they'll pass you by, Glory days in the wink of a young girl's
eye, Glory days, glory days..."
