I don't wanna go back to high school!

I don’t wanna go back to high school!

I left town immediately after high school graduation. Literally, though at first it was only to do the usual Up North summer trip. We would be leaving at 4am, my mother’s favorite time to travel in our non air conditioned vehicle. (Once she got air conditioning, she never turned it off, not even in the dead of winter). I drove home alone from a graduation party and had a flat tire at 3am in an unfamiliar, shuttered neighborhood. I had somehow bumbled into the actual Detroit! Nobody was thrilled to have a knock at the door in the wee hours, even by a skinny girl in a pastel party dress. At the third house, I was allowed to slip my auto club card through the mailbox slot. Those were the days of the Cat Burglars, an unseen
presence which kept me up at night. Someone had to be watchful, though
it’s hard to believe I matched a profile as I paced the middle of the street in the middle of the night.
CBs did not knock on the door. Hello I’m your cat burglar, come to rob you. They crept in through a basement window, thoughtfully kept open by my unconcerned mother. Now you see why I had to be vigilant.
My survival those 3 years depended on my pack of friends, 2 of whom are included in the “In Memoriam” list, among the 15% who can no longer go back. A third friend has been MIA for sometime. As was I until Julie R. re-found me 20 years ago. I was jet lagged and virusy with sudden weather change last night and brought out the yearbook I'd recently uncovered. My search reminded me of a book I loved in high school. Not as short as Goodbye, Mr. Chips, but still a nice choice for a book report was The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder. It may not have aged well,though it won a Pulitzer in 1927. Brother Juniper explores the reasons why 5 people die when the
finest bridge in all of Peru collapses. Why them? Familiar topic: what is the meaning of life and does fate play a major role or is there a larger plan? I looked up each of the almost 80 people, in a class of 517, found some similarities, more differences. A number had nothing beneath their names.
Most of us did, though mine were pretty fake. “Candy Sales”, “Senior Activities”… nothing really civic, just ways to fill the spot, to appear involved, to avoid being seen as the outsider I felt. There seemed to be lots of jocks, though I did not cross check on the living. It was probably hard to be a teen boy and not a jock. Unlike today, girls had no such obligations. Like Wilder, I found no real connections, just shivers with the realization we are all headed in the same direction. He concludes with something about a bridge between the living and the dead, the only bridge being love.
My first conscious awareness of being the “other” and of later seeking out other “others” was at Indian Beach Camp in Northport, MI, a place for little Wasp girls, a place I loved for 3 summers. I must remember to look up Julie Dauraty, if I can remember how to spell the name. Maybe I was 12 the first summer when a campmate I don’t recall approached when we were alone and said: You shouldn’t
be here: you’re Jewish. I had no idea what she was talking about, my suburb being as lily white and as Wasp as the realty exclusion codes could make it. Differences were not talked about except to command Jacques: Are you a Democrat or a dead dog? (you had to nudge him as he was in fact a closet Dem). I kept this scary thing to myself until returning home, when I asked mother about it. “Don’t worry dear. You’re not Jewish.” Mother and I were not close, so now I knew: I was in fact Jewish, the family Jew, the reason for being an outsider in my own family. The story
of Mom and Me is a bit whiny and for another blog or even a memoir if it's not too late to add to the burgeoning oeuvre. In retrospect, this sense of
isolation was a good thing and why it was easy to escape and seek another life. My first fiancée and my first husband, 2 different people though both New Yorkers, are both Jewish, inevitable choices.
Back at the reunion (are blogs supposed to be more succinct? Am I capable of that?), going to a cocktail party at Marie’s mom’s was a perfect, small scale way to begin. Most of us present, not including partners, had been friends since Defer Elementary School. I’d had a falling out with sweet Marie in 2nd grade, however, and wondered if her 91-year-old mom would remember. I brought a small peace
offering in case, a little notebook from the D.I.A. with a Jacob Lawrence painting cover. It could even have been 1st grade, as we did “Show and Tell”, a practice alive and well today. My grandbaby invents his own. As I walk in his front door, he rushes madly about, looking for things to show me by way of greeting.
My sophisticated, irreverent mother was full of stories and jokes and this one had something to do with God giving out the looks, I thought he meant books; the brains…trains… Next day, Marie told me her mom said we could not play anymore because I had blasphemed. In present day, Marie is just as sweet and
gracious as I recall, even prettier. Only neurotic me recalls such stuff with clarity. I never got to see mom.
On to the Grosse Pointe War Memorial,(1910 estate on Lake St. Clair dedicated to WWII veterans and to hosting such gatherings) where I was thrilled that Diane, a major organizer, allowed Judy and me, as well as Liz and Julie, to work the front table, checking people in, handing out name tags and the much sought-after reunion books. We were firmly instructed not to give the books out except under certain conditions, this not by Diane, but by another committee member who was always shushing people. We soon had to alter this rule and she belonged at the elementary school reunion anyway. It was all good and I enjoyed re-meeting my first Ken, of several. He liked that and told Skip I was really cute at age 14. Next to him, Nancy, as civic today as she was in high school. My favorite new friend was Jaime aka James, an exchange student from Spain. He indulged me and we spoke Spanish. Skip and I are eager for the book he hopes to publish on Goya. Still, I spent the weekend wondering what to say to people. The names and nametag badge yearbook photos were familiar, but beyond that? “Where have you been keeping yourself these 50 long years?”