You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
High School reunions.
I returned to California this past weekend for my 30th.
It was a lot of fun, more than I expected, and I often expect a lot.
The gathering brought back a flood of memories that inundated my brain.
From seeing the old school which “ain’t” so old anymore, to the old yearbook that someone produced as if it were one of the sacred tablets brought down from Mt. Siani.
They opened the cover, cracking it open, releasing the moments of a life time like it was the arc of the covenant.
Memories and thoughts preserved for 3 decades suddenly came to life.
I watched the ancient year book passed from group to group and I remembered back to that day.
It was May 1981. We were at someone’s house. There was a keg flowing and nachos being spilled on the floor.
I was signing Heather’s yearbook. As is customary, I was on Heather’s page writing ferociously.
Armed with a sharpie designed to last a lifetime and using a sniper’s wit, I unloaded on any white spot on the page.
There’s no right or wrong way to sign a year book, unless you are naked and using a protruding body part. That’s frowned upon in at least all states except Alabama where it might actually be encouraged with the awarding of food stamps.
I think the composition for a year book signing should be one part Walden’s Pond and One part Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Whatever was in my frontal lobe that day was what I wrote. I am sure that I was high on life, not to mention cheap Budweiser beer. That was the oil that was greasing my gears keeping my marking pen to page.
The idea was to keep it fresh, keep it young, keep it flowing like a rap song from the Sugar Hill Gang. Have I dated myself yet?
Finish with Heather’s page and on to the next year book and another diatribe of high school angst and pimple faced predictions for the future.
Topics could range from what you ate in the dining hall that day to loves you loved to laughs that made your gut hurt.
And as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. The keg was dry and the bean dip all gone.
Soon the class of 81 scattered to the winds like a dust cloud in a Missouri corn field.
Graduation was suddenly in our rear view mirror, a million miles away.
The Earth has circled the sun 30 times since that day.
We’ve been to college and got jobs. We have got married and birthed children. We’ve done great things and nothing at all. We’ve gotten divorced and stayed married.
Now it’s time to return to the scene of the crime. To swap stories of life and remember where we came from.
So we gather in a pristine zip code in Pebble Beach, California, where it all began.
20 of us from the class of 81 have returned to compare lives and war stories. We compare stomachs and grey hairs and divorces gone bad.
It all starts at the registration booth. It’s here that you begin your walk down memory lane.
“Hi, can I help you,” the young girls at the front table say.
“Yeah Andy Cordan, class of 81,” I respond.
As the woman looks for my paperwork, I see the name plates of my classmates.
Lord and Hogan and Piper and Russell.
They’re all coming back I think to myself. Wow, I haven’t seen these people in 30 years. I wonder what that will be like.
“Here you go,” the woman says handing me my name tag. It’s hand written because I am a last minute arrival.
I stick the name tag on my pocket and move to the main tent.
There’s a fog descending off the Pacific and the wind is wet with moisture.
I sure would like to put a beer in my hand, I think to myself.
I move inside the tent and the catered reception beginning to illuminate.
Just then my high school brain signals; “Hey that looks like Russell”
“You sure?” my old man brain responds.
“Yeah that’s him. He’s a little older and grayer around the temples, but that’s him,” High school brain says emphatically.
I walk up to the man who was a companion for four years.
“Hey Russell,” I say stealing a glance at his name tag.
“Cordan,” I say helping him along.
I see Russell boldly written on his name tag.
Thank God I think to myself.
Russell’s face brims ear to ear. He too sneaks a peek at my name tag with all the stealth of a pick pocket.
“Cordan, how the hell are you?” he says with a boyish sincerity.
We embrace like two long lost brothers.
We talk about pep rally’s and teachers who went through the motions. We talk about the party at the beach and the day that thing happened over by the place. It’s awesome, like being in a rain storm of forgotten memories.
Like a levee being opened by the Corp of Engineers, the topics once so prevalent in my life, flood my mind.
High School dances, and SAT prep classes and beach parties and last second jump shots that hit the rim and clanked away.
We can’t ask and answer the questions fast enough.
And just when you are getting in a rhythm, another member of the class of 81 arrives. The newest school mate approaches, glances at our name tags and quickly blurts out “Cordan – Russell! What’s up.”
And so it goes all night long.
A CIA like glance at a name tag and then a huge smile and hug and the stories uncork like cheap wine flowing from a bottle with a screw on top.
30 years melt away and we’re just high school kids again, standing in the middle of the school that helped make us the people we have become.
Like metal forged in an educational blast furnace, we are all made from this school, prepared like Excalibur to be pulled from the stone. The class of 81 shares an existence, a common bond that binds us like the magic that rustles through the trees of the forest.
The questions at a reunion are repetitive but necessary. “how ya doing?” “What have you been up to?” “You married? got kids? where do you live and what do you do?”
The questions pump forth like fuel being pushed into a high octane carburetor.
Eventually the group is centered around the cocktail table where memories are pouring freely, being pryed from the dark recesses of time.
It’s then that the year book arrives. It looks foreign and familiar all at once. It is held in high regard, like the Holy Grail.
I haven’t seen the yearbook in 30 years but just the cover illuminates a dark place in my brain, like a light shining in the attic of an old house.
Whoever is holding the book becomes the narrator of our teenage lives.
Most likely to succeed is so and so, the narrator rants. Well it turns out the person in our class most likely to succeed was the kid who had a million shares of Google when the IPO was offered. Someone said he was worth 650-million today.
Nice work Dave Drummond.
Then there was the classmate voted most likely to have five kids by 1990. Sadly the headline for the winner should have read: MOST LIKELY TO ROB A BANK AND GO TO PRISON.
For real.
As I look at the yearbook I begin to chuckle. Almost every senior has chosen a consistent theme to mark their four years at the school.
The photos are unlike anything that new millennium high school hierarchy would allow.
As page after page is turned I see classmates posing with kegs, standing on kegs, caressing kegs as if they are going to get a cheap motel room together. I see classmates drinking beer. Classmates are holding cocktail glasses and doing shots acting like we are the rat pack of Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra’s generation.
How can this be?
There is also endless imagery of weapons. Knives and hand grenades and shot guns and assault rifles. It looks less like a graduation photo and more like a band of brothers preparing to go to war.
I didn’t realize that Rambo is our class mascot.
The man currently in charge of the yearbook pauses on a photo of two graduates in 3 piece suits. The men are wearing mirrored sunglasses and holding shot guns while positioning their boots on kegs.
Of course they are.
It’s hard to know if the young grads are going to college or to war or signing up for the secret service or working as hired muscle for the mafia.
As page after page reveals more insanity, I wonder how any high school could authorize this. It makes the school seem less about reading, writing and arithmetic and more about sex and drugs and rock and roll.
Are the sex pistols on our board of directors?
Are we the class of 1981 or a bunch of wild ass rock stars ready to kick the future in its flatulent, stagnant ass?
Were we really this brazen? Were we this freaking dumb?
The pictures don’t lie do they?
If a year book like this hit the streets today, the principal would be arrested for child abuse.
The year book editor would be publicly flogged, made to stand in his own excrement in the parking lot of a broken down Sears store for a week.
Then I came upon my own year book entry.
OMG.
Hidden in the back woods brain swamp of my mind, the memories began to swirl.
Am I standing in front of the American Flag? In front of a Mountain in Tibet?
nope.
I’m the dumbest of the dumb!
Me and a kid named Harner are wearing police uniforms rented from the local costume shop. He is carrying a large silver keg and I am carrying a billy club. We are both are wearing cop sunglasses and look like we mean business.
Behind us are four bewildered boys spread eagle on the wall. They are apparently under arrest and unsure why the police are taking their beer.
The moment is frozen in time, unbelievably allowed to see the light of day by a year book staff with the mentality of warm jello.
The message is clear: Two 18 year olds are pretending to be authority figures so they can steal alcohol being illegally consumed by four other high school boys who won’t legally be allowed to drink for another 3 years.
Perfect! Bravo Class of 1981. I toast you!
It made me think, is 1981 so different than the class of 2011? Has so much changed in 30 years? Aren’t kids just kids?
I went to my son’s graduation this year. Nobody wore a beer cup hat with a straw.
There were no AK -47’s aimed at the lens. Nobody in the class of 2011 seemed to want to go postal like the Una Bomber with a case of hemorrhoids.
Nobody in the class of 2011 was sitting in a beer cooler on a throne constructed out of Coors Light cases.
Was the class of 81 special or just special needs driving the short bus into a wall of confusion?
As I talked with old friends I had not seen for a quarter century, I was reminded of a class with a spectacular bond and a penchant for breaking the rules.
I think the crazy-vibe festering in the class of 1981 was the perfect elixir to help us tackle life.
Kids today are coddled and handled like delicate glass that might break.
Children today are soft like wet Kleenex, ill prepared for a life that is sure to throw them some left hooks.
The Class of 81 for all our drunken bravado is a success story that includes business entrepreneurs and solid citizens.
No offense class of 2011, I love ya, but I think maybe we kick your ass.
While you graduated to Lady Gaga, we turned our tassells to the four chord banging riffs of Angus Young and ac/dc.
As I sit in this jetliner staring out the porthole filled with blue sky and puffy clouds, I can only come to the conclusion that we were special.
We had balls and a flair for the dramatic. We dared to be different and individualistic.
Nancy Regan changed a generation when she said; “Just say no.” But No didn’t exist in our year book pages. Probably a good thing. I think we would have punched Just Say No in the face and knocked it to the curb.
I toast you class of 81.
Stay Crazy!