You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy?
High School, is crazy.
Young love. Young angst. Young drama.
High School is the incubator for it all. Hormones raging. Developing bodies. Sexual desire. Independent thought.
High School is our first real social network where human connectivity is tested and probed without the use of an internet filter.
High School is where your zits are the talk of gym class. Your stupid purple scarf the joke of study hall. The new girl’s tight sweater on the radar screen of every throbbing adolescent in the building.
Whether you were a stoner, an athlete, a cheerleader, a nerd or the social butterfly, high school warehoused you under one roof.
Like a box in that warehouse, you had a label with a number.
My number? 81. Short for the class of 81.
There were only 106 kids in the class of 81.
Sure we had clicks, and lots of differences, but we also had a sense of togetherness. You can’t go to a school this small and not know everyone and everyone know you. It was like a fraternity house where our first shared experience as young adults was forged.
Parties and SAT’s and Dating and getting grounded and then after four years…..
Cap and gown and graduation parties and …
Vapor.
One door closes and a new door to life opens.
For many of us this is when the journey truly begins. But the building blocks of who you are and who you will become are forged in the societal combustion chamber known as high school.
When I graduated, I went to college. Except for a smattering of instances, I never really came home. Once they handed me my h.s. diploma, like a green flag at a NASCAR race, life’s enigmatic odyssey began.
I traveled the country and got different jobs. Marriage and kids and adventure. Life has a way of leading you where life wants.
Suddenly 30 years was gone.
I found myself this weekend wondering about the 106 from the class of 81.
Facebook is an amazing thing. I searched my high school and suddenly a class list of names I hadn’t thought about in 30 years materialized.
“Let’s meet at Adam’s Saturday night,” I wrote.
It was impromptu without much advance warning. Only four classmates could attend.
2 guys. 2 girls. 30 years later.
It was crazy.
The first knock on the door yielded a guy I had not seen since graduation day. He was bigger and greyer and wider.
As he saw me, his much larger face sparkled and I saw the kid I knew decades ago.
He embraced me and we laughed.
knock knock knock
A woman I thought was cute in high school was at the door. Like sea glass worn by the elements, you could tell her road had been a windy one full of hard knocks and life erosion.
She hugged me and smiled. In the sparkle of her eye was that young girl, so cute, she could turn a boy’s head from across the quad.
The first few minutes were awkward, but didn’t last long. We all had a bond, something indelible that only 106 of had and we drew on this building block to close the gap of 4 decades of separation.
Question began firing around the kitchen counter.
“What happened to …”
“Where did so and so go?”
“Really? He was found dead in a hotel room and and nobody knows what happened?”
It was a riot. Suddenly the strangers in the kitchen were my friends again.
I couldn’t keep track of everyone’s marriages come and gone and kids in college and married, but I could see the teenagers I entered life with still beaming inside each one of these people.
A beer or two later, the stories were flowing in buckets. The stories were growing, like those freeze dried sea horses where you add water and the little pill of condensed matter grows exponentially into a colorful design.
Stories and memories and laughter of good times and bad.
The cute high school blurts out, “A kitchen counter like this we’d be playing quarters back in the day.”
We all laughed. She was right. I realized that I still burned with the same teenager crazy that I always had.
After a few hours, I realized that college may prepare us for the world, but high school is the mortar of life.
For good or bad, for better or worse, high school is when much of what you are is forged. It does not define you, but it does provide the materials of which that life will be built.
As the night concluded, I hugged the 4 from 81 and it was like old times.
We all promised that our 30th reunion would be a special one, one that none of us would miss.
As you round the mid way point in the race, you realize that Life is short, and maximizing things that are unique and special should be embraced, not taken for granted.
I can’t decide if I blew it by not attending my 10th or 20th or 25th, but I do know that I will work harder to stay in touch with the people that helped make me, me.
And that is crazy.