Down the Road A Ways, We Remember What Matters
There is a theory about the continuum of life, that it consists of two elements. As it goes, there is existence up to and including graduation from high school. And there is what comes after.
Anecdotal evidence lends credence to this theory. The story about the shy girl, a loner, who goes off to college, blossoms and ends up finding her bliss on an equatorial island halfway around the globe. The tale of the guy who grows up in a claustrophobic rural town, hops a bus the morning after the prom and discovers himself in the big city. There’s the captain of the football team who dates the homecoming queen and is king of his world. After getting his diploma, he’s fired from too many sales jobs, and ends up sweeping floors and regaling guys at the pub over and over about the Friday night when he scored three touchdowns.
Clichés? Perhaps.
Legitimate theory? Worth considering.
I looked forward to last weekend’s 40th year reunion of J.M. Atherton High School’s Class of ’63. Hopefully some universal truths would be revealed.
Phil Clore wasn’t so curious. Clore is bright and introspective. He’s published three volumes of courageous, epigrammatic poetry: “Crossing the Street by Myself,” “Thank You for Having Sex with Me” and “White Soul.” A couple of days before the reunion he confirmed he would not be attending.
“This is somewhat embarrassing. But this is the truth. I’m very narcissistic. I’m into fantasy. I like to remember everybody as they were then. Isn’t that silly?”
About a fifth of the class of 250 did show up Saturday. Including Gene Beard, who wrote this in my yearbook the last time I saw him, which was our last day of school: “Some people say I have many sports coats, and I do, but I got them at Zayre and Family Fair and Robert Hall and you got all of yours at Apples and Rodes and Levy’s, and they cost more, but pretty soon I’ll get a coat you can’t buy.”
Beard, a truly bright and funny guy, enlisted in the Marines, whose coat he wore for four years. Then he went to Vanderbilt where he hid that fact, masquerading as a kid fresh out of high school, so he wouldn’t catch grief at the anti-Vietnam War protests.
During dinner the other night, the ever feisty Beard threw down the gauntlet: “I bet I’m the most liberal one here.” The rest at the table demurred, including Tom Baker, now a professor at a small Texas university, and his wife, and Ken Wilson, once New York state’s high school teacher of the year, now retired.
Jenni Lehman was there, too, just as considerate as she was when she called Sina Craddock, her student council opponent, every night during the election while the rest of the school thought they were in some sort of Ginger vs. Mary Ann smackdown. Lehman made a special presentation the other night, a wedding gift to classmate Linda Laufenberg, who got married in 1972. The gift has been sitting in Lehman’s closet since, first in Denver, then in Memphis.
The point, one supposes, is this — there were no universal gotchas to be exhumed at the reunion. There were lots of confirmations and memories rekindled. Jeff Keith, a linguist and lexicographer, is still as disheveled and delightfully peculiar as he was. Nancy Pennycook and Betsy Opper are still chic as they were. Turner Straeffer is still dapper. Larry Morgan still has a great, warm smile. Frisso Potts, on the faculty at Harvard Medical School, is still a good guy. Judy Potts, a financial manager in Utah, remains as beautiful as when we followed her up the steps every day after lunch. Some who were smug and aloof back then remain so today.
Late in the evening, Gene Beard added perspective. “Remember Robert Mittenthal? You know, we weren’t very nice to him.”
Someone replied, “Well, he wore a slide rule on his belt.”
Another offered, “We were young. Geez, what did we know? We did stupid stuff, mean stuff sometimes. It’s part of growing up.”
Then we reminisced some more. About Mr. Brashear’s physics class. And Atherton’s Frisbee team, the world’s first, we proudly claim.
Beard, one last time: “I’d forgotten. We laughed a lot, didn’t we?”
So we did. In ’63. And ’03. Laughs born of shared and parallel experiences before, during and after high school. Laughs that denote one universal truth that matters — human connect
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