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player ready...Ah, those glory days of high school, circa 1973. Proms and pimples. Hormones and hickeys. Jocks and jerks. Who would not want to celebrate those golden times … a half-century later?
As I continue my slog to the inevitable, I am increasingly suspicious of answering the clarion call of nostalgia. Heck, I don’t even like looking at old photographs. The danger of poring over the bygone decades is that the past becomes overvalued, the present undervalued and, as for the future, well, my friends, I suspect that any value remaining greatly diminishes with time.
As for the high school years, which felt like an unending September-June prison sentence locked up in the custody of Chicago Public Schools, this timid kid remembers after-school basketball games (I could touch the rim back then), playing Strat-O-Matic baseball with buddies over bottles of Pepsi, and, don’t laugh, receiving a trophy for four years of perfect attendance — the greatest dubious achievement award ever.
You might wonder why I did not miss a single day of high school? Would it have made a difference in my future if I skipped a few days of home economics or remedial typing? Perhaps my motive was similar to what Woody Allen once quipped, that “80% of success in life is just showing up.” But he reportedly said it years after my release from CPS for good behavior. A better reason is that trophy represents the origins of a lifetime of masochism, the perfect preparation for a writer to experience decades of perpetual rejection and humiliation. And, alas, I still type with two fingers.
Did that trophy lead to an esteemed collegiate career? Let me review my post-high school record: I graduated from college by squeezing four years into 13.
Still, despite putting in long hours in un-air-conditioned medieval-era classrooms and having never been disciplined for tardiness, I was an unremarkable, middling student at best. And as for success, I can say that enduring those embarrassing sex ed classes with their florid films without passing out — as one classmate did — will forever count as a victory. Also a win: surviving awkward, nude swim classes and the wet-towel-snapping, red welt-inducing locker room attacks by macho members of the football team after a loss.
Fun times worth celebrating, eh?
Note: The concept of “bullying” had not yet evolved in the hallways, bathrooms and gym classes of CPS, but words such as “rat,” “fink” and “snitch” were all the rage. So, for bespectacled, un-muscled, sensitive boys like me, we just took our punishment without complaint. “Thank you, sir, may I have another?”
Did the cruelty scar me for life? I don’t think so, but I do avoid showering at my local gym, and I am a firm believer that letting your kid play high school football is a form of child abuse.
I did attend my 20th high school reunion with mixed results. I assure you that among the well-suited, perfectly coifed successful lawyers, physicians, hedge fund managers and professors, I was the only alumnus that had published poems in a rarely read Saskatchewan literary journal (four times!) and the only guy wearing a string tie, khakis and a denim shirt.
I confess I did enjoy reuniting with my high school girlfriend, and with my Strat-O-Matic and basketball pals. But let’s add up the total of people I liked reconnecting with that evening: four. The evening was interminably long and disorienting. Even when I was greeted, I failed to place faces with names. I felt as if I were attending a party with a mix of strangers and characters from past dreams. Never again, I thought, as I flew a hasty retreat to Idaho to continue my legacy as a “minor regional writer.”
Thirty years hence, the herd has thinned. One recent article estimated that only 20% to 30% of alumni attend their 50th high school reunions. After all, people die, lose interest or, in my case, do not want to be reminded of four of the most awkward, frustrating and confusing years of their life.
Like most 67-year-olds at morning kaffeeklatsches at their neighborhood Panera or Starbucks, I assume this year’s reunion attendees will probably prattle on about knee replacements and acid reflux, career highlights and cancer close calls and the subject that no one really wants to ever hear about: tales of their incredibly brilliant grandkids.
So, as I have with the 30th and 40th reunions, I will pass. After all, I still don’t own a suit, and as for that string tie? Still so not in fashion.
Stephen J. Lyons is the author of six books of journalism and essays, most recently “Searching for Home: Misadventures With Misanthropes.”
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