Our dresses were sparkling, chosen for the bling-image we wanted to project, while we secretly celebrated the fact that we were still alive 30 years after graduating from High School. We wore silver high-heels and carried gold bags. Some of us, out of habit, wore an excessive amount of makeup.
We pumped the arms of boys who were now a bit paunchy and had wallets full of children (and a few grandchildren, too). We misapplied "boy" in this case.
We approached perfect strangers with the opener, "do I know you?" which was frequently wrong, and we thought we actually hadn't changed all that much ourselves. For the week leading up to the event we imagined a re-enactment similar to the ones conducted by Civil War enthusiasts, a re-creation of battlefield surges and losses with other people in similar uniforms. These field exercises had dogged us even into our late forties: we were not popular enough, we did not have the coolest friends, we didn't have the nerve to approach whoever was necessary for a happy existence. We died a social death.
It was silly but it was part of memory. A telescoping memory narrows our view, as if we are a general surveying the field during the re-enactment from a great temporal distance.
A cool observation from the balcony, looking down into the high school reunion throng.
ReplyDeleteWhat did Rosalie discover? That the narrowing of memory does or doesn't accord with the mundane "now"? Did you feel "reunited"?
I've been thinking a lot about the past myself, how I always tried to escape it, and how it is now stuck to me, like my shadow. For me, there was always a future that was going to be better, but now that animating desire feels empty. Time has run out on me. High school felt like a prison, and I expected college to be so much better (and it was.)
What was your high school experience, and how does it look 30 years later?
I love the photo! I seem to recall that long-handled ax thing, what the heck was that? And turntables are coming back into vogue for audiophiles! Could aviator glasses be around the corner too... ugh.