Either/ Or

A few months ago, K got wind of his immanent 30-year class reunion.  I felt disinclined to attend until recently, when the time started to draw near and I could see he wanted to go with me.

Some of his classmates set up a High School Reunion page on Facebook and I took the time to read some of the discussions.  The only reason I took the time, however, is that K had also been reading them, and frankly....the insulin shock was too much for him.

Amid the happy-happy-joy-joy comments was pictorial evidence of just how good those days really were.
Apparently, the best days of some people's lives--a fact I find either pathetically sad, or patently untrue. I'm going to go with the latter.

For even the most vapid of persons, high school is a combination of insecurity, upheaval and nerves. One day is the best day ever, which can then quickly devolve into the biggest catastrophe of your life. He loves me, he loves me not. She looked at me, she wasn't looking at me. I'm popular; nobody likes me. I don't exist. I stand out like a pimply, broken, sore thumb. Are they talking about me? Do they even know my name? Did she roll her eyes at me, or is it an eyelash caught in her tear duct?

Academics may have been the simplest and most straight-forward aspect of all of it. Socially? A nightmare. But interestingly, 30 years into the future, no one recalls the agonizing reality of eating lunch alone or if they will get asked to prom. No; now, thirty years later, at the age of 48, everyone on the reunion page talks about high school as if the years were indeed golden, as if the harsh and cruel realities of Life up until this point has somehow diminished the cruel realities of our tender teens.

Of course, looking back, one can see with the perspective of 30 years that 'he loves me, he loves me not' is a mere drop in the bucket of anguish in the years to come.  We laugh at the silly rivalries we once had, the competition, the nasty comments. We shrug off the pants-ing incident in the locker room, the cruel chant using your name and a derogatory one simultaneously; we laugh it off, we forget....we don't care...do we?

It seems some people do care. They don't just see high school as a rose-colored memory through rose lenses on a rosy hilltop. They remember the pain.

More than that, they are aware of the pain that has occurred over the past 30 years, to themselves, each other, to families, to communities, to countries. This is what struck my husband the most; the forgetting. The "Nostalgia as analgesic." If we talk about how cute the cheerleaders were, we can escape, if only for a moment, how the world, our world, has changed. Not just the inner world, but the greater world in which we live. So K wrote about it on a blog post. It was beautiful and poignant. I want to share a snippet:

Statistics are bastards, because the Class of 81 is not immune to them. We can recognize  the 12 deaths, but what about the deaths of children and spouses? What about the mental illness, adultery, divorce, imprisonment, alcohol and drug addiction, unemployment (quite possibly at least 10% of our class right now, probably more)? In other words, no special treatment for our minions. And oh yes, didn’t the D-ettes look hot in those boots.

But not everyone thought it was poignant and beautiful.  In fact, most thought it was, to put it mildly...negative. The "N" word.

Interestingly, when K posted his thoughts on the page, he received many comments that admonished him for being negative. But it also opened a door.

The few silent who were on the reunion mailing list who did not--could not respond with happy, happy, joy, joy, now had permission to share what really went on with them in high school. Many posted of their pain, their inability to fit in, their feelings of isolation. I know how cathartic this can be--to open up and say "it hurt" and be heard. It can heal even the oldest of wounds. But those people? Yeah.

"N."

There is no in-between witch. You are either a good witch, or a bad witch. You are either positive, or you are negative. There is no room for gray, and there is no room for humanity.

After the spell of people being "N", the happy, happy joy, joy began anew. Many people, positively relieved that "all that negativity had stopped" began posting again, Some had even written on the site that they had stopped visiting the page because it had become, for a moment, so negative.

Yes....negative--the irrational ideology that permeates all religions and cultures which stamps a label on the negative person as an undesirable; a malcontent. A misanthrope. Never a realist, never balanced and sturdy. No, never those things. Because gray has no white in it. A bad witch has no good. A negative person can't be positive. And memories can't ever be tainted with anything unpopular, or the person who remembers with both negative and positive recollections will be ostracized, outcast. They will have no one with whom they can eat their lunch. Not even in a vast medium as a Facebook reunion page, and not even as a 48 year old with the perspective of 30 years can outrun the public's need to eradicate reality.

We bought our tickets to the event, and we're going. I'm sure there will be many moments when the smiles of the positive folk will dim upon realizing that we see things differently, we remember and see a whole worldview that doesn't include the truth-numbing revision of history. It doesn't include all white. It doesn't include the good witch alone.

For those who choose this positive-only mentality, I say carry on. It's your life. But when life, as it tends to do,  becomes so black, you can't find a white thought within miles, keep in mind, there are many of us out here who can see gray.  We can take your white and your black, your good and your bad. You can sit at our table, There's room.

Chowder