Reunions and the Popcorn Years

I was never a fan of High School reunions. I was never sociable in my teenage years. As a strategy for staying away from home as much as possible, I worked all the time, and in jobs where I learned how to behave like an adult in order to interact successfully with adults. On returning to school each fall, I'd feel like a stranger in a foreign land. Coming back out of an adult world, I didn't share the usual teenage interests, so it was hard to relate to most of the other kids. They all seemed so ... childish. Their usual take on this was that I seemed so ... aloof. To me, other kids were mostly juvenile and boring; to them, I was a stuck up odd-ball. Hence, I made very few friends among my classmates - I thought.

What reason would there be for me to go to a class reunion?

This year was our 50th high school class reunion. I didn't participate. I had other obligations anyway, so that provided a convenient excuse. The real reason was the archaic feelings and perceptions left over from fifty years ago - all the awkward moments, the feelings of being different, of being on the outside looking in, of not really belonging or being accepted as part of the group. I never cared to revisit any of that. (More truthfully, I probably always feared that.)

But then, I got the bright idea of developing a class reunion website template and giving it away for free to promote a couple of my not-so-best-selling books. Part of that template was a "Remembrance" page. Building the prototype around my own high school class, I discovered that so far, forty-two of my former 270-some classmates have a spot on that page. Some I never knew, and others I barely knew.

But then there were the others.

I remembered Dawn, a flippant, flirty girl who often volunteered a teasing conversation with me in classes and hallways, in spite of my lowly place in the pecking order. Evidently, she saw something in me that I didn't know was there. I remember her as a fun person who frequently made me feel comfortable in that otherwise seemingly hostile environment.

Janice was a twin. I went all through school, beginning in the grades, with she and her look-alike sister. They were quiet. In the lower grades, when one became ill and vomited on her disk, so did the other. They were twins, after all.

Jim; good-looking and having an engaging way of always looking surprised and interested in what was going on. Peter, the son of some city fathers, and trying to carry on in that tradition. He married a girl I thought I was in love with in the Second Grade. Brent, the athlete, but crippled and doomed to never succeed in spite of credible athletic abilities. Then Perry; a rather strange and quiet boy who didn't seem to fit in - like me, maybe.

Then there was Albert, known as "Pug." I don't know why, except that his dad was also named Al. I knew him forever. As little boys we used to swap night-overs. His Dad took me to the first football game I'd ever seen. Sitting there on the side of the hill at Green Hill Field, I stupidly kept calling the guys in the black and white stripes "umpires." They thought that was funny. It turned out that I would know Al senior until the day he died. When we were operating our family manufacturing business, Pug's dad provided us with electrical maintenance supplies, and stopped by frequently. I think the last time I saw Pug was at my Dad's funeral. He was then called "Al."

Jane, William, Arlan - I really didn't know them at all. Dennis was almost a neighborhood kid, but lived just outside the boundaries of what we considered "our neighborhood," and inside the borders of a somewhat rougher territory. He seemed like a "boy's boy" who would grow up to be a "man's man." I think his parents were divorced, which was not a common thing then. Kids from "broken homes" were expected to be difficult. When I eventually got to know Denny a little better, I was surprised to discover that he was not all "tough kid." I liked him.

Sharon I was barely acquainted with; only knew her by name. Jerry stands out in my memory as an example of the perfect personality conflict. He and I somehow got along, although our ways of thinking about things were always different, and usually diametrically opposite. I don't know why, or why we got along in spite of that.

Jay; didn't know him. Always seemed like trouble, I don't know why. Then Bob - cripes! Bob is gone? I didn't know that. He was always a happy, highly personable type, as a kid and as an adult. I've passed him so many times in the past few years, usually at the Post Office, and that always left me with a good feeling - pleased that he'd recognize me with a smile and a greeting. After all, he was one of the "popular kids."

And on, and on, through Charles, my "smart kid" childhood playmate; Sig, who I really didn't know real well in high school, but who, years later, always somehow recognized me on the street, down to Durrell, another one who quietly slipped away; we often bumped into one another at the supermarket, and he'd always somewhat sheepishly say hello. He was like me; not one of the "popular kids."

These are all people whom I thought I didn't know - whom I thought I had little in common with. Going back through the forty-two pictures, I count twenty-one who were actually special to me in one way or another. Exactly half.

Somebody once wrote -

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven … For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

I guess this is what he was talking about. These memories are indeed treasures - "golden" dividends of a person's investment in life. Opening this box to revisit one's treasures brings special feelings to the heart that somehow make life seem worth its trials and troubles after all. Meanwhile, if one does not dwell on the mud and lumps of coal, memories of unpleasant things inexorably sink deeper and deeper into the psyche, becoming ever more difficult to fetch back up.

What an ass I've been about class reunions!

Here's yet another example of the adage, "Ve get too soon olt, und too late schmardt!" Only now, at the twilight of my life, I've finally figured out what reunions are all about. I passed up fifty opportunities to polish some golden pieces of my life. Now many of those will have to remain as they are, perhaps somewhat tarnished with this new regret.

It took me a couple of days to put the Remembrance page together, using the class reunion's information, the SSDI (death index), and scanning portraits from the old high school yearbook. During that process, some very strong feelings about our human situation arose, bringing to mind from some corner of my memory the poignant truths of an old song written by Earl Wilson Jr:

We laugh, we cry, we live, we die;
And when we're gone, the world goes on.
We love, we hate, we learn too late;
How small we are, how little we know.

We hear, we touch, we talk too much,
Of things we have no knowledge of.
We see, we feel, yet can't conceal,
How small we are, how little we know.

See how the time moves swiftly by;
We don't know how, we don't know why.
We reach so high, and fall so low;
The more we learn, the less we know.

Too soon the time to go will come.
Too late the will to carry on.
And so we leave too much undone.
How small we are how little we know.

---

Then I got thinking about popcorn.

Somebody takes a handful of corn kernels and puts them into a bag. A little grease is added to facilitate the process, and a little flavoring, to improve the final product. This goes into the microwave for about four minutes. In a little while, there's a single pop, then a few moments later, another. During the first couple of minutes nothing much happens as that happy group of seeds turns round and round with the microwaves shining on them; just the occasional pop of the odd one, which for reasons unknown succumbs to the heat and pressure before all the rest. Then, in the third minute, all hell begins to break loose. Another pop, then another and another, popping in pairs, and finally an explosion of activity!

Then a few, a couple, a single pop or two - in four minutes, it's all over.

Classmates seem like a handful of humanity that, through happenstance, wind up in the same bag. We get a little upbringing and education in hopes of greasing our paths as we revel in the sunshine of life. Then there's the first pop. In our class that happened forty-eight years ago. A year after that came the second pop, then six years later yet another. Now, as my classmates and I are all pushing seventy, there are lots of pops. There will be lots of new pictures coming to my Remembrance page now; perhaps even my own.

In four score years, it'll be all over for us.

Is this aspect of life not like a bag of popcorn? Its duration is four score years, rather than four minutes, but its life story seems the same. I never could see why anyone would call these "The Golden Years."

I think "The Popcorn Years" is a caption more apt.

--=glw=-