High School: No Nostalgia

My childhood and teen years weren't nightmarish, but they weren't great, either. For the most part it would have all been the same if I hadn't been queer, in fact I think if I'd been 100% straight things might have been worse. 

I don't dwell on my life before age 20, I rarely even think about it. At age 20  I went to college where my brain emerged from a weird fog of sorts that it had been in during my teen years. At college I had the best time I'd ever had in my life and I made friends who decades later are still my friends.

I almost never think about high school. On rare occasions I ponder certain guys I had a thing for or I'd fooled around with. 

I've never attended a high school reunion because I have no interest in what my former classmates are up to. I had a couple friends in my class but mostly I had friends a year or two older or younger than me. (One friend, Lydia, is still a good friend. No, she wasn't my special high school gal pal who understood me. We were, and still are, both into music and writing and comedy.)

My class was, for the most part, pretty boring. They were either people interested in the contemporary culture (which mostly sucked in the early 80s) or people who found self-worth in how much cooler they were than everyone else (not an unusual trait in high school or real life). 

I wasn't cool enough to rate highly among the punkish set but I was OK enough to be allowed to hang around. The geeks were fine guys, but I wasn't interested in computers, D&D, or video games, nor was I smart enough to be more than someone to talk sci-fi or Monty Python with. I wasn't good looking enough to be popular, though I was well known enough to beat a few jocks in the student body president primaries. (I lost the election, but second place, considering the popular kids I beat, wasn't too bad.)

I have no negative feelings towards my class but I also don't care what's happened to them.

Recently at a party a couple of acquaintances, Eric and Neil, and I got discussing high school reunions. Both of these guys are smart and have a lot of cool interests and both of them have been to their various high school reunions. When I said I had no interest in ever attending a reunion they both went on and on about what a great experience it is. I explained my lack of connection to my class and they still suggested I should consider going.

“It's interesting to see how much people have changed,” Eric argued.

“Not just physically but as people.” Neil added.

“I didn't care about them then,” I explained, “I don't care what they're like now.”

“But people change,” Eric stressed.

“I know, and I don't care. I'm far more interested in what you had for lunch than what any of my classmates have been up to over the past decades.”

I couldn't convince them and they couldn't convince me. I'm where I've always been on the high school thing. 

My folks still live in the town where I grew up which is slightly annoying for me, a guy who doesn't think much about his life before age 20, because when I'm visiting them I'm constantly driving through the country and streets of my youth. The town has changed very little and the country is nearly the same. At times it can be like a dream, the past overlaying the present.

A few years back I drove around to all the schools I'd attended and thought about the years I'd spent at each one. That appeased any sliver of nostalgia I might've had.

I've been fortunate in not having ran into any former classmates. The place where I grew up is the sort of place most people leave. That's spared me having to have forced conversation with people who I only know because of the chance of age and location. 

I hate small talk and loathe being asked “What have you been up to?” I have nothing to say to that question. My life has been a blast but it's also been incredibly dull by most standards. I'm not a professional, I don't have a career. I've never gone on a trip others would regard as interesting. I'm not married or partnered and I don't have (or want) kids. Other than some minor success with some of the art I've made I've done nothing worth recounting to anyone. 

Which is why a high school reunion, for me, would be a tiny hell of small talk and boring memories.