With the big day coming up — the 50th high school reunion to which I am not going — I’m getting deluged with emails from The Reunion Group. I no longer read all of them, but every once in a while, I open one up and I’m always sorry I did. The primary area of discussion has moved on from each person telling the story of his or her way better-than-mine life to reminiscing about the school song, almost the definition of “from the sublime to the ridiculous.”
We never sang that song. Not at assemblies, not in chorus, not at all. Almost no one knew the words. I knew the words because they were so funny to me, given the real school and who we were, that I memorized the words for kicks and was usually the only kid who knew all three verses.
Here’s to her the school we love,
Jamaica, tried and true – oo,
Source of all our dearest aims,
Dear School of Red and Blue.
Red and Blue
Red and Blue
School of Red and Blue!
In love our hearts go out to her,
Dear school of Red and Blue!
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If that doesn’t make you cry, you have no soul. It makes me laugh, so what does that make me?
What compels otherwise sane folks to transform a mixed experience rich with the good, the bad and a big dollop of indifferent, into “the best years of our lives?” It wasn’t. Not for anyone. They cancelled the Senior Prom due to lack of interest. I know because I actually had a date for the prom, but he and I were the only two people to sign up, so they cancelled it. What does that say about reality versus memory?
A few people go way back. We didn’t merely attend high school together. We also went to elementary school and junior high school in one big batch. We got to know each other a lot better than we wanted, a huge dose of too much information. By junior high, I was too miserable to remember much of anything and was being actively bullied by the same mean girls I swear are still hanging around hallways and school yards today. Maybe they are clones of the same girls.
Thank God for the special program that got me through three years of junior high in two years. At least the misery was shortened by a year. Pity about never learning fractions and all. It certainly didn’t improve my shaky math skills.
So all of these people are singing (literally in some cases) the praises of the school and the school system. It was a better than average school academically, but fantastic? It was huge, crowded and if you didn’t measure up and get yourself into the “brainiac college-bound” group, you got nothing from the school except a place to sit in class. The school was academically better than most, but otherwise was no better than every other overcrowded New York city high school. I had some interesting teachers. I had a few really good teachers, and at least one that seriously influenced my future. There were also one or two memorable ones, though not always in a good way.
With current planning involving all these aging nerds and geeks singing the school song, I cannot begin to imagine myself standing around (probably sitting since my arthritis is pretty bad) howling a school song no one ever sang while we were going to school. I think I’d collapse from laughter, genuine ROFLMAO stuff.
What urge makes people cast a rosy glow over a time that wasn’t rosy for them? So many of my classmates seem intent on reliving a past that didn’t happen at all. Is it because we are getting old and want our youth to have been much happier than it was?
Life was what it was. I am not a fan of revisionist history. I occasionally get an email from someone who has found my blog or my Facebook page. They want to renew our friendship. But we weren’t friends. Ever. Some of them are from that group of “mean girls” who turned my life in elementary school and junior high into a small personal hell. Now they want to be my pal? Really? Why? Have they actually forgotten the way it was? Why does no one ever talk about the one really cool thing we had: a gorgeous Olympic-sized swimming pool. Maybe I was the only one who always chose swimming instead of gym. I didn’t mind getting my hair wet, but apparently I was unique that way.
Is this whole collective stumble down memory lane a bizarre form of self-hypnosis whereby we erase real memories and replace them with stuff that never happened? Are we that old and out of touch?
I remember. Many of us suffered from, as did I, difficult home lives. We did a lot of acting out, each in our own way. I buried myself in books and didn’t emerge until college. Fortunately, that turned out to be a lot less destructive than other possible coping mechanisms. I’m watching my granddaughter do her own version of self-destruction for reasons painfully similar to mine, minus the abusive parents, but adding in social ostracism impossible until computers and cell phones. I have serious doubts about the human race and supposed social progress.
But here I go waxing philosophical again. Hell, I’m still trying to figure out exactly what point God was making when he took Job, beat him to a pulp, then told him he had no right to question why it was happening to him. That’s my very favorite Bible story. Life in a nutshell. Shut up Marilyn. Apparently everyone but me has been highly successful and had insanely perfect lives. It’s just possible that I didn’t live the past half century on the same planet as they did. It doesn’t sound like my planet. Does it sound like yours?
This is far too weird for me though it makes good fodder for writing. And inserting lots of question marks in my tired old brain.
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Categories: city, Education, Family, Friendship, History, Life, Reality
Whoa lady, was it a snarky, intelligent , help, I need more words, email? Are you going to share email? I had an awful day until I read this, now I’m excited for you.
Hope you will share when or if you want to.
High 5 to you!
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Um, I’m not actually quite sure what you are referring to … 😉
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I have a sense of loss about my ‘schooling’ and academic experience. I never graduated or finished any of it.
Yet, in the school of life, I feel I’ve graduated with Honors from several schools that most people don’t even qualify for. Most of those diplomas are awards of spiritual merit.
I still have a long way to go to get my Master’s degree.
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We all have a long way to go. Just we know it. Some folks don’t.
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Interesting and insightful. If I did not miss a post this is your second time writing on the subject of your reunion.
Have you considered writing them a mass email how you remember your years with them? The responses, if you receive any could be quite interesting.
You use the English language very well. Your note to them would be very interest and probably hilarious. I want to read it.
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I did exactly that. It triggered the deluge of email I’m currently trying very hard to ignore with a notable lack of success 🙂
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