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 Chuck, Manuel 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 Rick. 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 Rick 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, Rick 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. Gordon joined me, and we
spent the night matching each other drink for drink.
Chuck and his wife Linda showed up, and they brought Chuck's
brother Rich. Manuel 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, Paula, Dawn, Ofelia and Berna. For some reason,
Paula and Dawn kept buying me drinks. It's as if they knew what
was to come.
After dinner, my buddy Ray and I were shooting the shit when
that phony fuck Rick wandered over. Ray and Rick seem to get
along great, so I just stepped back a few paces and let Ray deal
with him. I walked back over to Gordon, 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 Rick 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 chiropractor."
"Yeah, it's been a few years now."
"Uh-huh," I said, taking another long swig. "Do
you still have that billboard?"
Rick 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 Dr. Reno."
Dr. Reno definitely had a billboard.
That ugly incident over, I headed for the bar (my answer for
everything) when Debbie 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?"
Shelita won.
"Who's been married the longest?"
Shelita 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 Jerry,
who happened to be talking to Rick. Fuck it. What harm could
I do now? I caught Jerry 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!" Rick 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 ag classes just so I could go to Santa
Rosa High."
Too weird. Rick 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 spent a season with the Green Bay Packers before
going to chiropractic school. I don't believe I've ever had someone
figured so wrong in my life. Rick's a great guy, I thought.
A few minutes later, Rick 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. Carmen 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?" Chuck asked. "Got a
little shrinkage going on?" Nothing like a Seinfeld reference
to slice through the mix.
"Fuck you, Chuck, 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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STANDARD DISCLAIMER:
This column aims to be funny. If you can read anything else into
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