graduation day

about this time 20 years ago i was graduating from high school. i don't remember much about the ceremony other than it was polite compared to others i'd been to and moved relatively quickly. i have no idea who i sat next to. i don't recollect who spoke. i know i wore a grey robe, but only because i have pictures. i'm sure i wore red socks, since they were my trademark, much like being barefoot would mark me as i got older. my friend steve was valedictorian - i knew him all my life and knew early on he was smarter than me. or at least more diligent in his studies. my friend amy sang a song she wrote for our class, but that's all i've got. for a rite of passage, i don't have much.

ironically enough, many of my fellow classmates are gathering tonight at bar in dayton to celebrate our 20th reunion. initially, i planned to go - i mean, come on, it's my 20th. how often does that happen? and enough time had passed to see how people had changed. but somewhere in the process i lost my desire to go. maybe i didn't care to see how people had changed. maybe i worried about what people would think of how i'd changed. maybe i saw the list of people attending and realized these were not the people i shared my high school memories with. maybe it was the abhorrent grammar and spelling in the far too numerous reminders. but here i sit instead, at home, writing about my graduation day instead of celebrating it.

unlike many people, i enjoyed my high school years. sure there was the normal drama, especially with my wonderfully cheery and optimistic personality. but school wasn't a drudgery for me. of course, perhaps it helps that i remember so little about my time in school. i remember band. i remember show choir. i remember drama club. i remember muse machine. my classes? not so much. not sure if i've just blocked it to spare myself the trauma of the time. only therapy could tell.

they - you know, people who are asked to speak at commencement exercises and the like - they tell you the friends you make in high school eventually fade away and it's the friends you make in college that are the ones that stick. i wish i could prove that adage false, but i only keep in touch with a handful of friends from high school and that only sporadically. scott. steve. amy. i wonder about some. gabe. paul. donnie. deron. but not enough to go searching.

most times high school seems like something that happened to someone else, a tale told in third person. and maybe that's why i'm not drinking with everyone else at gambits tonight - i'd be trying to live someone else's story, trying to connect with people i only know second hand. i know for some, their reunion provided a moment of clarity, a reconnection to who they were. maybe i missed my chance. guess i'll never know. i'll end up like iona's friend in pretty in pink: i'll get this terrible feeling something is missing. i'll check my pockets, i'll check my keys, i'll count my cds and then realize nothing is missing. it's all just a side effect of skipping my reunion.

i should go flip through my old yearbooks, find those pictures, throw in some music from that time (ooh, stryper! INXS!), get a little nostalgia overload. it's the perfect night for it - skies full of thunderstorms, ghosts of the past flitting through my thoughts, just the slightest twinge of what might have been. better than wasting time here in cyberspace...Æ

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Now playing: Teenage Fanclub - Everything Flows
via FoxyTunes

ps seriously, these are the lyrics for the above song. gotta love itunes on random.

We get older every year
But you don't change
Or I don't notice you're changing
I think about it every day
But only for a little while
And then I feel it

I'll never know which way to flow
Set a course that I don't know
I'll never know which way to flow
Set a course that I don't know

The wind's blowing in my face
Lately find it hard to keep the pace
And I'm looking for a place to go
But only for a little while
And then the feeling

I'll never know which way to flow
Set a course that I don't know
I'll never know which way to flow
Set a course that I don't know