Youth is wasted on the young. Mark Twain
For some strange and interesting reason most of the Class of 1973, Rich Township East High School, Park Forest, IL are up on FaceBook. It suprized the hell out of me. I occaisionaly searched the goofy alumni websites but there'd only be one or two folks up there and I didn't know them very well. If I remember correctly, we had around 430 graduates. I could be wrong- I often am.
What I find exceedingly and embarassingly interesting was how wrong, way, way wrong I was about the people in my class, how we all stuck to our little cliques to protect ourselves with people exactly like us. I heard someone recently call High School the only place you protect your body AND your soul. How right that was.
Here's just a few of the things I've found out in the last three or four months that amaze me and make me sad I was such a dope back then:
- I thought my best friend and I were the only liberals. We'd canvassed for McCarthy and a couple of more local folks and found out our hometown (Park Forest, IL) was a Republican Bastion...sort of like Wheaton without the College. Almost every single one of the folks I've found up here were (and are) just as liberal as Chris and Me. And I never knew. Yeah, there are a few neoconservatives in the class, but most of them moved to Southern or Western States where they're probably more comfortable anyway. I just simply don't talk politics with them. I already have heart disease.
- We had a lot of spectacular looking young women at that school. I *always* felt out of my league. Turns out- they're all extremely warm, intelligent and still very good looking. Don't get me wrong, I love my wife and have absolutely no plans to leave... but one *does* wonder what might have happened if one wasn't so self-aware, scared, intimidated and had a few chips on the shoulder. Do all kids go through this? I know we all think puberty sucks, but I saw a lot of poeple having parties on the weekends and suppporting each other. Could have made a difference in my own experience.
- I've been invited to vacation at about a dozen places by these folks. Even if we can't plow through and see some of them, it made each of my days when that happened. Not so much for a free meal or a jam session, but to think they'd go out of their way for me when I was in some really narrow and goofy cliques.
- One young women for whom I was rabid (remember them days of constant hormone movement?) called me a 'geek.' Now, I've never worked for the circus and certainly never cut off chicken heads with my mouth, so I asked her what she meant (it coulda been extremely embarassing). She said- oh, only that you're smart. Me?!? Boy I musta pulled the wool over the eyes of a buncha peoples' eyes (she and I hardly mixed, weren't in many classes together) because I never, ever thought of myself that way. My former best friend in the entire world said the same thing a few years ago. I remain astonished, embarassed and foolish. If I was so smart, how come I didn't get a scholarship or get on the It's Academic Team or last more than a year in Debate? Looking back, I think it was immaturity and excessive competetiveness. And being a jerk, of course.
- Music. Suprized the bejesus out me when one of the popular women from 4th grade through graduation told me she now lives near Teluride and invited me out to jam. She also said her mother was going to the same anti-war rallies Chris and I were going to (!). Another friend came over the house one Saturday and jammed with my music friends and freaked me out- he was doing much of the same stuff I do- except he knows barre chords and stuff. When I posted a YouTube clip of a Pete Seeger/Wood Guthrie promotional film on my facebook page- I got a LOT of comments. And most of them have stayed current with the music as well. That's soooo coool in my book. Music has always my raod to spirituality- not classical stuff, stuff you can play in your own living room with friends- share and enjoy. It took me 40 years to realize that and a second time to get my calluses back (never, ever, again) but I did.
We all pretended, though, that the town we grew up in, a post WWII bedroom community and the first planned community ever (Take THAT, Leavittown) was special. But it was only special for the white, suburban ethos which many communities have. While our town was desegregated and pretty much welcomed everyone and had a complete housing inventory, we had very few black familys, Muslim Familys or Chicano Families. They simply couldn't afford to live there. So it was privileged. And everybody could stay out late at the playground, guys, we're talking the 50s and 60s here.
I have enjoyed reconnecting with people whom I'd only nodded to in the hallways or whose lockers were next to mine. And I'm glad I have a much better picture of them. Before this, I thought my time in high school was the worst period of my life- isolated, scared, falling in love every hour and a half with someone new and keeping it all inside. I even wrote a year end column for the newspaper that was, um, caustic. I was pissed off for 30 years that the Speech Coach forced me to audition as a Senior against a Sophmore for state competition. I think he was angry at me for the way the Debate Team (when I was on it) brought his effeminant mannerisms to ridicule, He was actually the first MetroSexual I ever knew, but I couldn't care less. I think he was punishing me for the Debaters as well as getting his own boy (our former head coach moved to another district high school my Senior year) state experience. I was 40 years old before I let that go. He wound up at one of the local high schools here in the western suburbs. He was a principal. I think often about stopping by and beating the shit out of him. But I didn't. I should have. I wanted to. He deserved it. But what would that say about me? And I could imagine the headlines: Radio News Guy Beats Former Coach. Not good. That's when I let it go.
So.
I am enjoying my classmates immensely. They are far, far better people than I thought, even though I knew intellectually that sterotyping is stupid.
I may even show up at the next reunion. I gotta get back on that diet...
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