By Stephen Whitley, KERA 90.1 Commentator
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kera/local-kera-488808.mp3
Commentary: The Class of 1985
Dallas, TX –
Like so many people I know, I felt ambivalent about attending my high school reunion. Part of me was interested in seeing everyone, catching up with people to see what they were like 20 years on. Part of me couldn't imagine going back to the scene of so many insults, real and imagined, and being with people it seemed I had spent a large portion of my adult life trying to run away from. Why would I want to spend the night before my birthday with them? I don't know what convinced me to go, perhaps it was an attempt to put to rest demons that had plagued me for years, and part of it was simple curiosity. I wanted to see who had gotten fat, who had gotten thin, and to see if the giants of my high school years were still larger than life.
Winnsboro, Texas is like so many other small towns: very conservative, very religious, and slightly cliquish. Growing up there, for someone like me who was more interested in reading than football, hunting or fishing was, difficult. I spent most of my childhood thinking no one liked me, I was such an outsider, so different, that I never felt as though I fit in. Throughout my junior high and high school years I plotted my escape. I used to look at the advertisements for boarding schools in the back of Southern Living with longing. Even though I paid little attention to my classmates, I thought about them constantly after I graduated. When something good or bad happened in my life, I often wondered what my high school classmates would think about it. Because I felt so out of place in high school, I longed for their approval; I was desperate for them to somehow know that I had turned out okay despite them.
A few years ago, due in large part to advancing age, I began to think less and less about the people from high school. No longer did I think my "If they could only see me now they'd be jealous" thoughts. I had moved on. So when it came time for my 20th high school reunion, I wondered what the point of going would really be. I hadn't anything to prove. I didn't think I really cared what anyone else was doing. Then I volunteered to compile a booklet about each person in the class, a mini-biography about each classmate. As I read through each person's submission, I began to see the inherent human-ness in each of them. The leviathan that haunted my past disappeared.
At the reunion that summer Saturday night, as I listened to people talk, I realized that many of them had felt the same way I felt in high school, out of place, like no one liked them. It seems I wasn't the only one with ambivalence about my past. I realized these people I had spent so much time running away from shared a big part of my past. We laughed at the things we did in high school, told stories on each other, talked about the people who weren't there and generally had a good time.
As midnight came that Saturday night, my former classmates stayed up just long enough to sing me "Happy Birthday." For someone who used to think no one liked him, that was one of the best birthday presents I've ever had.
Stephen Whitley is a writer from Dallas.
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