August 2010 Archives

I recently attended my thirtieth high-school reunion.  It was an odd dose of reality.  I don't feel that old and I certainly don't act like it.  Perhaps I should, but I don't.

The thirtieth reunion is supposed to be the big one. at least I've gotten it into my head that it is.  I suppose that's because my father went to his thirtieth back in 1979.  He wouldn't have gone unless he thought there were some importance attached to it. 

Dad had few kind words for his high-school days, and why should he?  He grew up in the Imperial Valley,  downwind of the Salton Sea where temperatures routinely top 110 degrees and surrounded by people without the good sense to move somewhere else.  Perhaps he considered the experience as a rite of passage and a time to reflect.  At the very least, he was amused to see the senior voted "Most Likely to Succeed" pumping gas at a local filling station.

Self-assessment is a cinch when someone else takes the brunt of life's little ironies.

I, on the other hand, did not spend my high-school years in such a hell on earth.  I spent them in Santa Barbara, which can only be considered hell in a "Hotel California" sort of way.  With beautiful beaches, a near-perfect climate, and a multitude of idle rich living in the hills surrounding the town, it was almost a forgone conclusion that Santa Barbara would have a soap opera named after it.

So in some small way, those of us who grew up there learned to think of ourselves as better than everyone else.  Don't blame us though.  It isn't our fault.  It's yours.  If more of you were better at hiding your envy when I mentioned my hometown, I might have learned to temper my arrogance.  It's not like where you grew up is that awful.  Where was that again?  Oxnard?  I suppose that isn't such a bad place, not that anyone would ever name a soap opera after it or anything.  Let's be serious.

Most of my friends haven't attended any of their reunions and never plan to.  I can understand their reasoning.  They have no desire to relive a period of their live when jocks, cheerleaders, and other subhumans ruled their world.  However, it could have been a lot worse.  If you clump a bunch of people together who are full of herd instinct and insecurity, then add hormones to the mix, some cliquishness and dysfunction are par for the course.  We should consider ourselves lucky our situations didn't deteriorate into Lord of the Flies with erections.

Also, no one takes the old social strata seriously anymore, not even the once popular kids.  The real world, even what passes for it in Santa Barbara, has thrown icewater of our preconceptions of society and for the most part, people have adjusted accordingly.  I have actually experienced nominees for homecoming queen treat me as an equal, and if I was feeling charitable, I have returned the courtesy.

I've attended all my reunions that end with a zero.  The tenth came when I was still young enough to want to impress my old classmates.  I was more or less a non-entity in high school.  I was in a bunch of school plays where I was cast in small supporting roles and wrote fluff pieces for the school newspaper during my senior year.

So in 1990, I showed up in a nice suit and spoke about my fledgling career as a computer programmer with sky's-the-limit enthusiasm.  I made it a point to only get moderately drunk.  Sure there were people who were more successful than me but that didn't matter.  I was had turned out OK.  I was somebody, sort of.

I reappeared after another decade had passed.  During that period, I had done a fair amount of traveling and showed up with my then wife I had met in Amsterdam in 1993.  I was also on the verge of becoming filthy rich, at least I thought so at the time.  I was working for a dot com and although the boom was beginning to falter, I shrugged it off as a minor hiccup in an era of unparalleled prosperity.

I felt I didn't need to impress anybody and it showed.  Those who remembered me as a nice enough if somewhat nerdy kid were now faced with a fat drunken slob who hadn't had a haircut in over a year and said "fuck" far more often than was absolutely necessary.  Looking back, it's amazing what lengths I was willing to go to show that I had nothing to prove.

In the next couple of years, I lost my wife, my job, and what little direction I had in life.  I still had a penchant for debauchery and threw myself into it with a single-mindedness I have never exhibited for any pursuit before or since.  After years of this nonsense, I settled into my current existence as a functional boozehound.  I wouldn't consider myself a success story but I manage to hold a job and my episodes of being a public embarrassment are kept to a minimum.

So it was with this modest sense of accomplishment that i showed up for my thirtieth reunion.  My girlfriend Paula came with me, which was a definite plus.  I saw my classmates as I'm sure they saw me, youth and potential bitch slapped by Father Time, and I needed a co-conspirator in my corner with whom I could talk smack.  Also, Paula has genuine social skills.  She is good at carrying on a conversation on some pleasant but mundane topic at length, a talent that has eluded me.   When cornered by good and decent people, my fight-or-flight instinct kicks in and I'll try to back them off by telling them how I found Jesus after dropping eight hits of acid and microwaving my cat.

With Paula pinch-hitting for me, I was allowed to sit back and take in my surroundings.  Or better still, get up and move among these people with whom I had little in common except for some distant memories and a grim slide into middle age.   We wore nametags with our senior pictures on them to help people recognize us.  Even with that hint hanging from my lapel, I had to remove my glasses while the person squinted at me, scratched his or her head, and ultimately took my word for it. 

Music I never liked played on a sound system at adult-friendly volume while a slideshow of images of "Mork and Mindy" and other cultural icons of our youth were projected on a screen above the dance floor.  People ate, drank, danced, and chatted with each other.  Most seemed to be having a good time.  We may not have happy to have gotten older but we were plenty happy to still be alive.

I headed off to the bathroom and snapped a photo of myself in the mirror.  The paunchy nearsighted me standing in front of the toilet stall didn't look much like the fresh-faced kid on my lapel.  I was OK with that.  I didn't think I would be but I was.

I left the bathroom to go find Paula and let the evening wind down.

My parents were in the waiting room by the front desk when I was let out.  Judging from the frown on my mother's face, they had been there for a long time.  My father didn't seem to mind.  He was entranced by the section of wall that listed all the police officers who had given their lives in the line of duty.

"There are a lot of guys with the first name Robert," he said.  "If I were named Robert, I'd think twice before joining the force. It must be like having a target painted on the middle of your back."

"Shut up Harold," my mother said.

My mother was plenty ticked off and stared at me like she expected me to say something.  I didn't know what I was expected to say.  I couldn't think of anything that would maker her less angry.  Anything I said would probably upset her more but maybe that's what she wanted.  Knowing my mother, she was enjoying being angry but didn't feel like she was angry enough.  She got even angrier when I didn't say anything so in a way, I think I did the right thing.

There was silence until we got to the car and my father was driving us home.  Finally, my mother broke the silence.  She was usually the one to speak first, and last, and do most of the talking in between.

"Do you know what the desk sergeant said to me?" she asked, turning around to face me.

I turned my head away and looked at the streetlights streaming by against the night sky.

"Well, do you?" she asked again.

At that age, I sort of knew what a rhetorical question even if I didn't know the term for it.  At least I knew that there were some questions you weren't supposed to answer and I could have sworn this was one of those.

"I'll tell you what he said.  He said that because of you, a dangerous criminal is going to go free.  Since you couldn't be bothered to pick a murderer and rapist out of a line up, he will be back on the streets by morning.  What do you have to say for yourself?"

"I didn't know that."

"Don't you lie to me."

"Honest, Mom, i didn't know he was a murderer and a rapist.  Nobody ever told me they did it first."

"Oh for God's sake.  Harold, did you hear what your son just said?"

"Sorry, couldn't quite catch it," my father said, turning up the volume on the car radio.

I always did like my dad.

When we got back to the house, my mother decided that I needed to be grounded.  I was to come straight home from school and stay in my room reading comic books until it was time for dinner.  Mom was really mad so this punishment was likely to go on for weeks, even months.  I was OK with that.

Cindy Penn didn't have to go to school the next day because her sister was dead. She must have told Brock Dixon about what happened, or someone else did, because now he had a brand new reason to beat me up.

"You let a killer go free and I bet you laughed when you watched him kill Cindy's sister," Brock said.

"I didn't laugh," I said, which was true.  I probably should have also said that I didn't see her get killed.  She was already dead.  Maybe he found her that way.

"I bet you laughed a lot.  I always knew you were a little punk and now you've gone too far.  You've had it.  Just wait until after school."

"I have to go straight home after school," I said.

"You're not even going to make it home, punk.  Count on it."

I expected Brock to slug me right then and there but he just walked away.  He left me alone during lunch and recess periods as well.  Whatever he had in store for me was going to wait until there were no teachers around to stop him.

The bell rang at the end of the day.  Brock, who sat in the back of the class, was the first out the door.  I left the same time as most of the students so I would be surrounded by as many kids as possible on the way out.  Outside the school, people started to disperse.  I decided to change from the usual path I took home.  I cut over several blocks from the way I normally went and doubled back a few times, always looking over my shoulder to make sure I wasn't being followed.

It took almost an hour extra to get to the street I lived on but I felt it was worth it.  I thought I was home free until Brock stepped out from behind a hedge.  He was holding the Louisville Slugger his dad had bought him when he started playing Little League.

"You've had it, punk," he said.

He swung the bat, hitting me with a glancing blow to the shoulder that almost knocked me down.  It hurt like a lot where I'd been hit but I was too scared to stick around and cry.  As I turned around and ran, he was yelling about how the next swing was going to be aimed at my head.

I could hear Brock's feet pounding the sidewalk behind me.  He was a faster runner than I was and I was sure I'd never make it home before his bat smashed in the side of my skull.  Then the sound of Brock's footsteps stopped.  There was a muffled cry and then silence.

I turned around and saw the man from yesterday.  He had grabbed Brock from behind and looked like he had no intention of letting him go.  Brock's eyes were opened wide and tears ran out from the corners.  He probably wanted to scream but there was no chance of that with the man's huge hand covering his mouth.

"Go home," the man said.  "I'll take it from here."

I turned and ran the rest of the way home.  When I got there. my mother was demanding to know what had taken me so long.  I went upstairs to my room as she threatened to ground me until I reached voting age.

The next day, I was back at the police station.  Lieutenant Simpkins sat me down and put a photograph on the table in front of me.  It was Brock Dixon.  He was dead.  He had been set on fire and had almost his entire baseball bat shoved up his butt.  I couldn't tell which had happened first.  He demanded answers.  I shrugged.  There was another lineup, another meeting with the sketch artist (I described Brock's dad this time), and I was sent home. 

This happened couple of more times, whenever a burned body was found on the street, which went on for about a year before it stopped for good.  I didn't mind because I was grounded and had nothing better to do.  At some point, Lieutenant Simpkins had started calling me "Little Mister Know-Nothing" but he was wrong.  I knew enough not to tell on the only real friend I'd ever had.