GayPatriot

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Appreciating Difference at My Reunion

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As I return from my high school reunion and reflect on all that happened this past weekend, I come away with a better picture of many of my classmates and an awareness of the limitations of, for lack of better word, nostalgia.

On Saturday, after lunching at Skyline Chili with some classmates, I decided to go out alone to see the school. In revisiting my old haunts, I might better recall what I had felt as an adolescent, my hopes and well as my fears, the excitement as well as the anxiety.

I experienced none of that.

You see, six years ago (or so), they tore down the building that had served as the Upper School when I was a student and replaced it with a modern monstrosity. They didn’t even spare the entryway which had a certain archetypal significance to many alumni. Instead of recalling my past, I became quite depressed, visiting a place where I had experienced much, but which had no physical resemblance to the high school I had once attended.

As I walked around campus, looking for familiar face, I saw only one, the teacher/coach I had least to wanted to see. I resisted the temptation to tell him off for never congratulating me or even encouraging me even after I had run much better than he had expected in my first Cross Country races in high school.

I hurried away from the school and found a certain comfort in helping my Dad hang pictures in his newly-repainted basement.

That night, at the dinner with my classmates — as at the cocktail reception the previous night — I saw a different side to my one-time peers. We had a small class (67) and with not everyone returning, there were too few of us to separate into our adolescent cliques. As a result, we all talked to one another; I learned that many of those whom I had assumed had just coasted through high school had also difficult times in their teenage years.

It seemed everyone had had some kind of difficulty and some who seemed part of the social mainstream, reported that they, like me, had felt outsiders in high school. In talking to them, I gained a greater appreciation for their difficult situations — even as they differed from my own. Perhaps I understood those who, in our high school days, had seemed so popular because it no longer mattered to me whether or not they liked me. I was no longer trying to impress them. As an adult with such an attitude, I could better see them as they were, as they are.

No longer envying their social success, I saw them as real people. No longer believing that happiness meant being like those with such (apparent) success, I was not afraid to come out to them as gay. Perhaps, I was a bit too forthcoming about my sexuality. I did talk about the blog — but I suffered no adverse reaction for it, not for my sexuality nor for my politics.

One classmate (a woman I had known since kindergarten, but hadn’t seen since high school) asked in a compassionate tone, when I knew I was gay. While I noted that I had been attracted to guys in high school, I hadn’t made the definitive link between that attraction and my sexuality until after college. Upon learning I was gay, another classmate apologized for having asked me if I was married. I laughed and said that he needn’t apologize. Another offered to fix me up with his sister until I informed him that she was the “wrong gender.”

In short, the revelation of my sexuality prompted curiosity rather than scorn.

The one thing that seemed to unite all our classmates, beyond our graduation from the same high school, was that each of us seemed to have suffered some great disappointment, some great difficulty in our adult years. And that realization helped me put my own sufferings into context. That, whereas at times, I had seemed cursed, it seemed that all of my classmates (at least with whom I talked at length) could (at one time or another) have made a similar evaluation of their own lives.

The first wife of one of the most decent men in our class left him for another man while wives of two additional classmates died in their thirties. A woman had to deal with severe health problem of a child while another classmate’s son had a learning disability. Others experienced untimely divorces or suffered when relationships did not work out as they had hoped.

That is, in the years since I last saw these people, no one had had a life that went as smoothly as we might have expected — or hoped — when we sat together at our graduation, looking forward to bright futures. At the same time, I realized that those whose lives I had once assumed to be smooth and carefree were anything but.

If anything, this reunion made me more compassionate to my fellow man, especially my high schoolmates whose apparent social success I once envied. It helped me see my own misfortunes not as a curse, but as part and parcel of a human life.

I’m glad I went back, even if I did not get to revisit my old adolescent haunts, the hallways where I had spent so much of my life and where I had dreamed of a future as far from that place as I could possibly imagine. This reunion was not so much about the place as about the people. And I saw my classmates in a different light than that of an anxious and isolated adolescent uncomfortable with his own difference.

No longer uncomfortable about that difference, I could better see them as they were and appreciate their lives even as they differed from my own. And be grateful for who I am — and the journey I have taken since I last saw them. Looking back at my life and getting a perspective on those of my erstwhile classmates, I hear the great Oscar Hammerstein‘s words from Oklahoma!: “I don’t say I’m no better than anybody else/But I’ll be damned if I ain’t jist as good!”

While I was familiar with those lyrics twenty-five years ago, I could not then have applied them to my high school classmates — or to myself. But, today, just days after my reunion, today, I can.

– B. Daniel Blatt (GayPatriotWest@aol.com)

Comments

  2. High School reunions are like movie sequels: not as exciting as the original – but then you’re just there to see how poorly they’ve aged.

    Good for you for going: Vera would sooner have taken the gas pipe.

    “Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.” ~George Bernard Shaw

  4. And though my High School is still standing, the place our graduation ceremony was held is not. USAir Arena (formerly known at the Capital Centre) in Landover, MD was torn down soon thereafter.

    Yes, that’s right. We graduated at a professional sports arena, lol.

  5. And our graduation ceremony was not a very dignified affair either. It was a pretty raucous event. But in our defense, it is kind of hard to have a dignified affair when there is a giant jumbotron hanging above your head. 🙂

  7. So did you go to school with roughly the same 67 people from kindergarten? I graduated in a class of 58, and the majority of those I attended school with since K. I can’t imagine what it would be like to go back and have a totally different building-that is a change that would feel really odd.

    I do think it is interesting how our perceptions of our fellow classmates while we are in high school often isn’t the reality, once we become adults and far removed from high school.

    I am glad you had a good time.

  10. Good post, Dan. Brought back memories of my high school days, both good and bad. My high school no longer exists, either. It closed as a high school in 1982 because of rezoning, 2 years after I graduated, and although the building still exists, it is now an empty shell, and the campus grounds are all closed off by a security fence with barbed wire around the top. The neighborhood has deteriorated quite a bit in the last 20 years or so. I drove by it when I went home for the holidays last year. Pretty sad. It was a good school at one time.

  11. As my mother always used to say, “No one’s life is ever as perfect as you think it is from the outside.” which always drew the typical teen-aged eye roll and heavy sigh.

    Sadly, it took me a few years of adulthood to fully realize the wisdom of that nugget.

    Congrats on coming into your own. My 20th reunion is coming up in 2007. Eeeek!

  12. Great post GPW. I also had a small class (80). Like you, my high school (since 2002) has moved to the city across the river. The original site was just left to go to seed & had structural damage as a result. I visited the site last March & it’s now nothing but a pile of busted & blasted white brick (sob!). My 25th reunion (aaargh!) will be taking place in 2007.

  13. “It helped me see my own misfortunes not as a curse, but as part and parcel of a human life” A good life is not one without adversity, it is how one deals with the curve balls that always come your way.
    A good positive aditude, that is one of the secrets to a good life.
    I hated my highschool years, always on the periphery of the in-crowd. I was amazed to learn that my husband loved his high school years, my sons as well. Each of them found their own unique crowd to hang out with. Going to a large public High School in Los Angeles may have something to do with it, they are so diverse in so many ways, there really is no one in-crowd.

  14. Wow.

    Mish-Mashes’ post disappears and Castrato’s post appears in its place. Neat trick. hmmmm!!

    Why don’t you guys take it “outside” and not mess up Dan’s pleasant/poignant post?!

    I’ll come out to play, presently. 🙂

    monty

  16. Dan, I’m smiling at the use of ShowTunes to bring some meaning or perspective to your experience and appreciation of classmates.

    I graduated from a small, Catholic school and we had our reunion this Fall. For most the part, people were still warm, caring, compassionate, civil and very much engaged in their communities. With each conversation, I came to greatly appreciated the fine work of the nuns and brothers in crafting decent, socially just, well intentioned people… many of whom contribute mightily to the betterment of their neighborhoods, churches, towns and cities.

    I was surprised at the number of classmates who had divorced –1 out of 121; 119 were married and some to fellow classmates. Out of the 137 graduates, 121 attended and about 80% came from out-of-state. No felons. No scandals. The number 1 volunteer activity? Coaching.

    The 121 attendees are parents to 218 children.

    I looked around the room and thought that this is the face of mainstream America –they are living the dream of a value-centered, morally responsible life. As a gay conservative, I was proud of my classmates and the lives we are intent on living.

  17. #14 – monty, you’ve already messed it up. Come on! LOL 🙂 Face up to your behavior. It’s yours!

    You opened (#1) by attacking the entire blog except Dan as soulless. Now (#14), you’re doing your name-flinging shtick. Own it, dude! Really – Have more courage of your convictions.

    Bye now and peace out! -c

  18. Calarato, Peter H nailed down monty as another reincarnation of the defunked raj/Ian/blah moniker… only “in drag”.

    monty was pissed and that reaction says it all… you could almost feel the spittle coming from the little outed sockpuppet.

    Sockpuppet Bingo claims another phoney –albeit an intellectually dishonest, stupid phoney like monty.

  21. I organized my 10-year reunion last summer. Amazing how much things change between graduation and joining the real world.

    That reunion was one of the best nights of my life in years.

  22. James, mine was #20 –and I hope they keep getting better for you like have for me/us. I agree with the folks who say “You can never go home” because our perceptions and vantage changes with time. But you sure can have a blast “just visiting” for a night, though.

  23. That is frightening! I mean, there were strangers to me in my high school graduating class even, lol.

    Granted, there weren’t a whole lot. For even at around 600 students, I knew just about everyone in one capacity or another.

    But I remember a few people having their name called at graduation and thinking “who’s that?” lol.

    We haven’t had a reunion yet.

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