Reunion

I doubt one could find a more priviledged youth than growing up in Potomac, MD. In the mid-70s it was steadily maturing from farm country to part of the widening expanse of DC suburbia. Unlike today, there existed few enclaves of mansions; rather, comfortable colonials and split-levels defined its landscape. Yet and still,  there was no “bad side” of town, the most modest in income living in wholly adequate townhouses that nobody would describe as run down.

Churchill High School was near entirely white, but for a small sprinkling of internationals and an African American contingent from a historical black community called “Scotland.” Hailing from Evanston, Ill., where integration came with a good deal of stress and conflict, I was fascinated with how seamlessly my black classmates moved throughout a snow-like landscape, always sticking together, yet effortlessly picking and choosing wherever they wanted to play a role. I’m sure they had another take on it, but that’s how I saw it.

When I first moved to the area it was viscous culture shock, coming from a firmly established middle American university town to an infant outlier filled with transients assaulted me. Scotland felt much more comfortable than the Brady Bunch world the rest of Potomac seemed like. Indeed, I made every effort to meld with the Scotland kids, but alas, they afforded no outsiders membership; you could hang with them, but wholly on their terms. Again, they may argue that point, but it was as I saw and felt it.

Churchill fulfilled every stereotype of high school life, none more than its indulgence of cliques. I don’t recall groups being set apart by title, yet they fully existed nonetheless. And like most teen social structures, they really represented three different realities. There was inside looking only inside (the A list not given to abiding inferiors), there was inside looking out (the very cool yet very nice, those everybody loved), and outside looking in (those feeling the angst of exclusion.) Everyone knew where they fit then as well as they do now, after 40 years of reflection.

High school may be life’s cruelest trauma because, as long as it seems to last, as pivotal as its experience is in defining our temperaments and self-esteem, it’s events, good and bad, memorable and forgettable, pleasant and painful, always seem just ahead of us, unfolding despite us rather than with us. Time does nothing but recall opportunities we allowed ourselves to miss, or perhaps even more cruelly highlight the triumphs we somehow could never again achieve. As good as it will never get again, or as bad as you hope to never again experience, and every other thing in between…. such is the spectrum for our lives high school mercilessly creates. And always, for everybody, it begins the point of departure of life’s relentless march, its subtle yet wholly frontal assault on the hard edges of our youth. Time can’t change where you were, but it surely defines how far you’ve come, or how little progress you’ve made…. and that is more than enough.

The Class of 78’s 40th reunion is a two-event affair, the first far more exclusive than the second. I felt exactly zero compunction to attend the Homecoming football game. Why would I? I never attended a varsity game at 17; I doubt I’ll do so at 58. Yet and still, it’s wonderful to see pictures of old classmates drinking in the joy and comraderie my aloofness foolishly cheated me out of as a youth. Maturity’s wisdom is meant to force accountability on all of us. The memories high school sports provide are there for the taking; who could begrudge those who took them? Still, 40 years has done little to strengthen bonds that never really existed. Pretending they did seems a pointless distraction for those who actually participated

Part two is tonight and should prove much more popular and better attended. Drinks will come from a bar instead of a keg, but everybody gets to party, free of the distractions that seemed preeminent in 1978! Tonight we can fully appreciate the fellowship many of us scorned as youths, and enjoy the common identity of our shared circumstance during a minuscule, yet gigantic, time span 40 years ago. Who we are now surely owes to what we were becoming then.  And how we assess then is a function of what we became. That’s life folks! Simple as it is devastatingly certain.

Twenty years ago, which seems like last month, my wife had to convince me to attend my 20th reunion. When I returned home, she asked how it went. I shrugged my shoulders and responded “not bad”…  “not sure what I was afraid of.” Two decades later fatherhood, as well as the certainty our political life can no longer be innocuously compartmentalized, has redefined who I am. Twenty years ago I walked around goofily showing a picture of my new born daughter, surely producing eye rolls from savvy parents who got started years earlier. Tonight I am as hardened to the vicissitudes  of parenthood as any, but will gladly enjoy tales of grandchildren I can’t yet share. Of course, social media has fully transformed the nature of class reunions. Most will have at least some impression of me garnered from my use of such platforms, good or bad. I’m ok with that; it’s simply who I’ve become. Who I was? … Give me a break! It was 40 years ago, for God’s sake! BC