Youth of Nostalgia

Youth of Nostalgia:

It’s been 23 years since I left the sheltered halls of my high school.  I look back and remember bits and pieces.  I think what I remember most was the lack of anticipation for graduation.  Not to detract from anyone, but high school graduation was not something I had to work hard to attain. Graduation was going to happen, almost a foregone conclusion to the path initiated the first day of kindergarten 13 years prior.  My peers and I, who in some cases had been together in the same education track since 5^th grade, had long since looked ahead of graduation by the time the day arrived.  We had completed college applications the previous year and had acceptance letters in hand.  Graduation was a dance we performed for those in the audience.  For some folks the day marked an end to friendships forged in the social fires of middle school or perhaps the realization that the prospect of 2000 mile long distance relationship with your first love was at best a pipe dream.  For others walking away from the school was an awakening.

Not for me and not for those like me.  As children who became self-aware in the 80’s we had a fairly selfish notion of life baked into us.  High school was just a game one had to get through in order to take the next step, move up, move out and make the bucks. For us, graduation was when the BS ended and life began, the end game had begun.

 “To each his own, but mine is better.” Really describes how I was feeling then, and how I remember it today….do your own thing but don’t get in my way since my thing is better, and more important, and mine.  I think it’s a fairly honest way to look at life, we are all selfish, especially as an 18 year old who had no clue.  Things of course are different now.

We graduated, spent a few weeks socializing at various friends’ homes, negotiating the awkward family events where the only sober people were the honorees themselves.  Then college came. 3 months after graduation, the place, people, and events that so consumed your life were gone.  I think we wanted it that way.  Over the years of college and the life that followed I rarely collided with anyone I knew in High school. I returned to my hometown for holidays and a 2 year period as a new parent, and I think crossed paths with only a handful of fellow alums.  Frankly it at once surprised me that fate didn’t bring our circles closer together, while it also makes perfect sense.  We all wanted out, to move on, to get on with life, and it happened.  Like solar orbits, the circles were too big and empty for the chance collisions to occur.

Then I joined Facebook.

Admit it, at first FB was at most a tool for snooping around searching names of those you last saw crossing the graduation stage. Checking in on those you thought were destined for greatness or failure, and the inevitable self-comparisons that follow.  As the camera phone morphed into the smart phone, FB became a place where we could feed our innate exhibitionism, and show off life.  Plates of dinners, duck face photos, weddings, new baby’s…..kids sporting events, Halloween costumes, Date night, Caribbean vacations….and now Prom, graduations, and babies of our children (our grandchildren!). 

We use FB to document our lives allowing others to share in our story.  We all can be proud to have known the each other way back when, knowing we had a ridiculously small roll in each other’s lives, but a roll none the less.  As we scroll through our feeds we can share momentarily in your victories, and suffer, just a bit, in your losses. 

This past weekend, the first few things on my news feed were pictures of Prom.  It was mind blowing a bit. My peers had children attending Prom and they were rightfully stoked to see their kids move through this rite of passage. 

I attended the ‘93 Prom as a Junior and I remember that night with more clarity than my senior prom.  The Jr. Prom took place on a boat in New York Harbor.  We had dinner and sailed around the statue of liberty, somehow there were even fireworks splashing against the New York Skyline.  The venue was excellent, but there were issues.  We had to be bused the 90 minutes from the school to the venue.  So by the time we arrived our dates where already torqued that their dresses were wrinkled and hair staticy from the bus seats.  We got off of the bus and were hit squarely with a wall of wind coming off of the harbor.  The water in the New York harbor is not warm in May, and the wind it generated was best described as biting.   The wind finished what the bus seats started, and frazzled women froze waiting to board the boat, and made haste to the bathroom to repair their hair and makeup.  For the first 45 minutes of the event, the men were all fairly dateless, cigars were found and enjoyed with the stellar topside view….my date wasn’t pleased, but in hindsight I had a great night.

Looking at the prom pictures on FB was like stepping back in time.  I hadn’t seen any of my peers since graduation, but when I saw the pictures it was as if I was looking at 1994 yearbook.  Each son in a tux or dolled up daughter looked to me like their parents who I knew briefly long ago.  Sons looked like Fathers; Daughters like their Moms, all of which makes total sense.  However, seeing the pictures and connecting the dots after 20 years was amazing.  For some the resemblance is so strong you could switch them out of the awkward yearbook photos and few would notice. It all got me thinking.

I was unable to attend the last high school reunion, but I saw the pictures on FB.  Folks looked happy and I was pleased to see that the walls we built as teenagers had long since fallen, swept aside by time and maturity.  Oddly, I feel closer to my classmates now than I did then.  Our lives have moved us each in our own direction but as we age our experiences merge similarly.  With fates allowance, I hope to attend the next reunion and meet men and women I knew as boys and girls, trade laughs over a drink and revel a bit in the youth of nostalgia. Until then, life goes on, enjoy it!