Class of '86

I just returned from my 30 year high school reunion. I wasn't the most popular person in high school. I wouldn't say I was unpopular, just regular. High school is such a crazy time filled with sturm und drang. At no other time in your life are you filled with such uncertainty and anxiety. Physically your body is morphing into its adult version of itself and you have no control over the changes. Everything is hairy and pimply and weird and back in the 80s, we were just starting to talk openly about things, but mostly we hid our shame. Had your period at school and bled through your clothes? That was embarrassing shit that you just didn't tell anyone other than the school nurse. If your parents couldn't get you or bring you a change of clothes, it was a fate worse than death. It's not that boys had it much better. There is that pesky thing called a penis that has a mind of its own and erections can happen at the most inconvenient times; math class, lunch, homeroom, locker room. I'm not sure what is worse.

Anyhow, back to the reunion. Once you've lived long enough to make it to your 30 year reunion you've gotten to the point in life where you are okay with yourself. You've passed the point of caring what anyone else thinks about you (this happens at about age 40, like clock work). You go back and everyone is a doughier, wrinklier and sometimes hairless version of their 16 year old self. At the 5, 10 and even the 20 year (still not 40 years old yet) there is still vanity, though it is inversely proportional to the time it's been since you graduated. At the 30 year reunion, you're not interested in putting people back into their Breakfast Club category; criminal, princess, athlete, brain, basket case. Because you've lived your life (and gone through all the "adult bullshit" as one of my classmates so eloquently phrased it), you just want to actually know these people you've known forever. It's a shame because one or two nights is just a tease. How can you possibly search the soul of every single person in your graduating class when you only have 2-4 hours. I want to know every single person's story. The ups and downs, the heartaches and the joys, the disappointments and the victories. I want to know the names of your children and your grandchildren. I want to know how you've made your living, who you married, who you divorced. In essence, I want to know how you've lived your life. I want to squeeze it down to an ingestible form that I can swallow and digest and make part of my fiber. When you share history with someone there is a covalent bond, unseen and hardy. These are the people who share the most fundamental and intimate of memories with you, memories that you don't share with even your spouse (except for the rare exception of childhood or high school sweethearts); snow days, school trips, substitute teachers, football games, skipped classes, crushes, embarrassing moments, nights out. The memories are trapped in your head (and sometimes your yearbook) like a vault and no one else has access to these things except the people who were there when it happened. It's instant validation that these experiences actually took place and helped shape who you are. We shared the same air for several years. You are a part of me and I am a part of you. And when you are at your 30 year reunion and pushing 50 years of age, you are going to have the conversation with those people you wished you had talked to back in high school. We are each others people.

I'm raising 3 teenagers of my own right now. I don't remember adolescence being this hard. I remember adolescence being exactly this hard. You remember the feeling and the emotions (Oh the emotions. So many, many emotions) like a distant cousin. It's all oddly familiar and yet at the same time, so inconvenient and maddening and fast. How can this person who lives in my home, who I call my child and who calls me parent act so odd and alien? How can they be filled with so much angst about something so inconsequential? Do they truly think the earth orbits around them as though they are the anchor of the universe? How can they be so sweet and then so evil? I took my 14 year old kid with me to one of the gatherings. He was mildly amused at first and then infinitely bored. I'm glad he came with me not just because I like to spend time with him, but I hope on some rudimentary level he absorbed the inconsequentialness of temporal worries. You grow up, you move on, you reconnect. You glean the ripeness out of every situation and you keep going. These people who show up to things. They are good people. All 3 of my kids, they will encounter hundreds if not thousands of good people who have a different set of burdens. Their burdens may be lighter or heavier but they are burdens nonetheless and everyone has their own breed. I hope that he, and my other 2, are respectful of that; we all have our junk. People are fragile and exercise caution because even though you may not see it on the outside, everyone has stuff on the inside. And while each person's poop may be different, it's also the same. We all have poop and that's what makes every single one of us vulnerable. And vulnerability is not bad. I just hope it doesn't take them 30 years to figure it out. It's gonna be okay. It's all gonna be okay. Even when it isn't okay, it's still gonna be okay. You got lots of other passengers on your ship with whom you can share and ask for support. Weakness can make you strong.

Thanks Class of '86 Chamblee Peeps (and Class of '81 Huntley Hills) for setting the mold. XOXO