Thirty years after sixth period
(... is an eight-hour reunion really long enough?)
My old high school is somewhat famous. Have you seen the movie
Peggy Sue Got Married? The exterior shots of the school were filmed at
Santa Rosa High (although most of the movie was shot in nearby
Petaluma, CA). With its columns and arches, SRHS looks the way a high
school was meant to look -- noble and strong, like a small-scale New
England college.
These days, high school buildings all suffer from the same
boxy, beige rectangular look. The so-called modern high school
buildings are probably designed that way on purpose, so the transition
from classroom to cubicle runs smoothly.
Although the best three years of my life were spent as a
college sophomore, there's something about high school you never get
over. If you get close, your classmates will plan a reunion every five
years or so and suck you back in again. You don't even have to attend
the reunion to be affected. Once you get the orange and black flier in
the mail, all the old haunting memories flood back to the brain.
Go Panthers.
And even though I had a better high school experience than
most, I still couldn't wait to get the hell out of there. During my
senior year, I was class president, captain of the wrestling team,
earned good grades and still dreaded going to school every day -- maybe
even more so than when I was a know-nothing freshmen. For in my senior
year, people expected things of me.
They still do.
Day two of the class reunion took place on a Saturday
afternoon at a picnic grounds in Geyserville, 40 miles north of Santa
Rosa. The event started at 2 p.m., but I decided to skip breakfast and
show up in time for lunch, about five or so. Lunch consisted of
M&Ms and peanuts, but dinner was planned for 8 o'clock, with
dancing until 10 p.m. That's a full eight-hour day, baby.
I had three goals to hit for the second day of the class
reunion. First, I wanted to see some old friends who hadn't shown up
for Friday night's bash, such as John, Rudy and other old jocks from
the cross country team. Second, I wanted to do something special to
make the event memorable. Finally, I wanted to avoid that phony asshole
Ramone. Since we hadn't spoken to each other in the past 30 years, I
didn't figure avoiding him would be too hard to pull off. I really
didn't know Ramone all that well, but he was a privileged rich kid who
got everything handed to him, and that was good enough to draw disdain
from me.
Besides, Ramone probably had a similar goal. Avoiding me.
After my light lunch, I headed over to the Lions Club portable
bar and bought a beer and a cigar, which is obnoxious but not memorable
enough to fulfill my goal. Oscar joined me, and we spent the night
matching each other drink for drink.
John and his wife Karen showed up, and they brought John's
brother, Trent. Rudy joined us, and the old cross country team had a
reunion within a reunion.
I sucked at cross country, by the way. Wrestling was my best
sport, but I preferred to hang out with the cross country guys. Have
you ever met a high school wrestler? Rock dumb. You have to be pretty
fuckin' stupid to become a wrestler. That and have no sense of social
dignity whatsoever.
I was no dummy. But I overachieved when it came to lacking a
sense of social dignity.
At dinner, I got lucky and sat with four still-gorgeous babes
from high school, Becky, Misty, Paulette and Loretta. For some reason,
Becky and Misty kept buying me drinks. It's as if they knew what was to
come.
After dinner, my buddy Ken and I were shooting the shit when
that phony fuck Ramone wandered over. Ken and Ramone seem to get along
great, so I just stepped back a few paces and let Ken deal with him. I
walked back over to Oscar, who informed me it was time to do some shots.
"I'm in," I said.
After the shots, I was nursing a beer when I looked across the
picnic grounds and saw Ramone coming straight at me. No way? I thought.
What's he doing? I looked behind me, but no one was there. He was
definitely coming over to see me. Fuck!
"What's up with you?" he asked.
"I'm all right. How are you doing?" I said, forcing a smile.
"I'm doing good. I heard you live in Texas now. I lived there
for awhile."
"Uh-huh. Yeah, I'm in Austin."
"What are you doing in Austin?"
"I'm a writer," I said and took a long sip of my beer. "And I
guess you're still a real estate broker."
"Yeah, it's been a few years now."
"Uh-huh," I said, taking another long swig. "Do you still have
that billboard?"
Ramone looked like I had just punched him in the stomach.
"Billboard? I never had a billboard."
"You didn't? I thought you did." I remembered some kind of ad.
Maybe it was in the yellow pages. Maybe it was on TV. All I remember
was that he wore a moustache, which he had since shaved.
"Did I do anything to hurt you during high school?" he asked.
"If I did, I'm sorry."
Man. He was not happy about the billboard accusation, which
was admirable in a twisted way. He wandered off and I called back to
him.
"Sorry, man. Guess I got you confused with Ronnie Roscoe."
Realtor Ronnie Roscoe definitely had a billboard.
That ugly incident over, I headed for the bar (my answer for
everything) when Sally accosted me.
"You need to make some announcements," she said.
Fine. I went over to the PA and read what she gave me. First,
I made sure to thank all the women on the reunion committee (it's
always the women who get things done). Then I read off some of the
hokey questions. Those who responded to the questions won a bottle of
wine.
"Welcome to Geezerville," I began. "Who has the most children
in the class?"
Sally won.
"Who's been married the longest?"
Sally won again. There was another category that was sure to
go to Shelita, but Debbie asked me to make something up instead.
"What classmate changed his last name without benefit of
marriage?"
I won that one.
My presidential duties completed, I wandered over to see Joe,
who happened to be talking to Ramone. Fuck it. What harm could I do
now? I caught Joe in mid-conversation.
"Well, you were always handsome and good at sports. So some of
us resented that. And you came from a good background and --"
"What!" Ramone said. "A good background? I lived in South
Park."
South Park? That was the ghetto of Santa Rosa, even worse than
the neighborhood I came from. Not that Westgate was all that tough a
neighborhood, but still.
"How come you never went to Cook Jr. High?" I asked. Cook was
an inner city school in the country, where all the wrong-side-of-town
kids were herded. Nobody ever whipped out a gun at Cook, but I saw more
than a few knives.
"My neighborhood just happened to be zoned for Slater. In
fact, I had to take aggie classes just so I could go to Santa Rosa
High."
Too weird. Ramone wasn't a rich kid after all. He came from a
large, poor family and worked his way to the top. Man, did I ever have
this guy figured wrong. It also turns out that even though he starred
on the football team, he worked after-school jobs to pay for his car,
and later worked his way through college. He eventually did well enough
at football to spend a season with the Atlanta Falcons before going
into real estate. I don't believe I've ever had someone figured so
wrong in my life. Ramone's a great guy, I thought.
A few minutes later, Ramone left the reunion and soon others
followed. I noticed that all the parents who brought kids were gone, so
I decided to make my move while 20 people still remained. I ran out to
the middle of a field and with John Fogerty's "Run Through The Jungle"
blasting through the PA speakers, I stripped off my clothes and started
dancing. Cindy ran out with a camera, but I was too quick for her, and
tackled her before she could take my picture. It was good for me.
My friends cut me no slack at all.
"Is it cold out there?"John asked. "Got a little shrinkage
going on?" Nothing like a Seinfeld reference to slice through the mix.
"Fuck you, John, that was actual size. That was a
purple-veined hard on, fuckwad. Your eyes are going."
The reunion broke up about five minutes after my dance. That
seems to happen whenever I get naked at a party.
Still, I gave people something to talk about for a few years
and I hit two out of three goals. I met some old friends and I did
something memorable. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to hit my third goal
and avoid the phony asshole of the class.
Because the phony asshole of the class turned out to be me.
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