coming out of my shell

coming out of my shell

Saturday, January 15, 2022

How did you navigate the highway of life?

I've never gone to a high school reunion.  I loved high school, but I'm still in touch with most of the people I hung out with back then. If I went to a reunion I'd have to mingle with the people I didn't particularly admire or like. No thanks. Call me bitchy, but you know: Ick!

As a freshman, I ran for student council and won. That's because I went to two different feeder schools in 8th grade, so a lot of people knew me. Name recognition wins elections. I tried to be normal and fit in with the electable crowd. But in all honesty, being normal and acceptable seemed like the death of the spirit. Those girls were all trying to act like adults.  

Towards the end of my first semester, I noticed a group of girls who were less "popular" and more "edgy." They were often in my art classes. They were loud, mouthy, and super damn fun. I chose them! We acted like wild teenagers for as long as we could. Fifty six years later, they are still my friends, even though I've lived hundreds (sometimes thousands) of miles away from them since young adulthood.  

Oh, the fun we had. The mischief we caused. It was a hard, frenetic road, but we zigzagged across it until we had kids. For better or worse, children change everything. I'd go into detail, but now I have grandchildren. This is why it is SO important to act like a teenager when you are a teenager. Once you have kids, adulthood never freaking ends.





13 comments:

  1. Doesn't matter if you have kids or not, there comes a time you must be an adult now and I'd prefer not to on most days. :-)
    My high schools days and beyond were all good. I only went to one reunion and I'd never do that again. Besides, note to self, don't marry your high school sweetheart. Then divorce because the reunions are awkward.

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  2. I've never been to a high school reunion. When my twin brother and I graduated from high school in New Jersey, my parents sold the house and we moved to California. We started a whole new life there without any of the familiar faces of kids we went to school with from grade school to graduation. I have a few Facebook friends from back in the day, but for the most part we've all gone off in a zillion different directions. My sister and I have been corresponding recently with one of our dearest New Jersey friends. Distance and time doesn't separate the loving heart.

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  3. I didn’t graduate. Technically, I got my diploma with the pregnant girls at night because I started working full time at a bank at 16.

    So, no HS reunions but I wouldn’t a have gone anyways. Definitely not my Schtick.

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  4. WHAT... wait... I was supposed to Grow Up? *Winks* I went to one High School Reunion... Yawn... those who'd been Popular were still acting like those were their best Years and they probably were as I doubt much happened for them after High School and there's nothing quite as sad as someone who never progressed beyond their High School Glory Days. Like you, I preferred the Edgier and Interesting people, the Non-Conformists... all of whom, at the Reunion, had gone on to have Interesting lives and we never much thought about High School. I doubt I'd attend another reunion, most would be dead now anyway...

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  5. I have attended one reunion, with my BFF, to please her and let her flaunt her mother's fox stoles. Never again.

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  6. I went to a very large high school (graduating class 1,500) and sadly, didn't remain friends with any HS buddies after we all scattered for college. It was different times for a closeted lesbian.

    But I would say that having kids allowed me to be a kid again. Sure there was all the adult stuff of bills and discipline and general responsibility. But there was also building sandcastles and making snow angels and skipping rope and Saturday cartoons. And now I'm hoping to live my third childhood with grandchildren : )

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  7. Good question, Colette. No high school reunions for me. Besides, my high school no longer exists, having been demolished so that expensive houses could be built in that now exclusive part of the San Francisco peninsula.

    Have two good friends that I've had since high school. One died two years ago. The other I haven't seen since 1973 when she got married, had a son and moved to upstate New York but I wrote her an email today after reading your post. We were the not-popular eccentric good-student types who listened to the Beatles and Bob Dylan. One friend became a lawyer, married, and never had children. The friend that I emailed today got married a few years after living in the Haight-Ashbury in the summer of 1967, had a total of three sons and went back to school when her children were nearly grown, earning an MSW and now has a private practice, working as a marriage and family counselor.

    My somewhat extended teenage years ended abruptly when my boyfriend returned, severely traumatized, from Vietnam and, in turn, traumatized me. Even before that, I never felt that I could be a parent because I could barely take care of myself due to an eating disorder and shattered self-esteem.

    At age 26, I married someone I didn't love and got sicker and sicker emotionally until leaving him at age 35 when I was finally able to see myself as having self-worth as an artist.

    I'm amazed that I was able to navigate through those rough waters to this time in my life where there are challenges but nothing like what I experienced as a child or young adult. I've had a lot of help along the way. Could not have come to where I am now without the help of other people.

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  8. I didn't go to any reunions. I didn't like or dislike high school. I really just wanted to move on from that time.

    One day, one step.

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  9. I have gone to reunions and found them to be fun. I was the friendly girl in high school that said hi to everyone.
    Lately, I get together with a group of women from my high school for brunch about every 6 weeks and it is fun to share stories and laughter with women that are at the same stage in life that I am.

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  10. I never acted like a teenager, as I went to a boarding school where we were expected to behave as responsible adults. I can't say I feel deprived though, I've had plenty of fun one way or another.

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  11. While I can read maps really well, I am shit at navigating. Always too much to take in along the way, enough to get distracted etc., change direction and so on. I don't think I was ever on the straight and narrow.

    I went to two reunions and it was ok but oh so predictable, most have lived such straight and narrow lives. You can check the yellow pages of my hometown and find that my former class mates neatly fill the sections for lawyers and medical doctors.

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  12. I also ran for student council, but I lost. Wah-wah.

    I went to one reunion (my 20th) and found it really fun, but I'm not sure I'd go to another. Nowadays, with Facebook, it seems pointless.

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  13. I hated school, mainly because I wasn't much good at being a schoolboy and I was an extreme coward when it came to being thrashed (a regular occurrence). I left school with one week of my fifteenth year stilll to go and started employment with the local newspaper on the lowest possible rung of the progress ladder - as a tea-boy. It was as if I'd gone to heaven without the inconvenience of having died and, gradually, I became a reporter. Twenty-five years later I was invited to a reporters/sub-editors reunion and I accepted enthusiastically. When I got there nobody remembered me. It didn't matter all that much since by then I was an established journalist. But I was temporarily cast down. Wrote a short-story about it for the blog (which was then called Works Well). Moral: always re-cycle unpleasant experiences.

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So, whadayathink?