This was the message I found waiting for me today at the end of my work day. Feeling a little confused I mustered a "Nope" in reply. Do I remember John Doe? Not really. I barely remember my Senior year, and not in the good drug- or alcohol-induced too-much-partying kind of way. I remember moving to town, walking to school whenever possible to avoid the bus, having a really awful basketball coach, and graduating just before leaving that town for good. There aren't many details to linger over.
I actually grew up in Rochester, MN where I had a couple of close childhood friends and in 7th grade found my first real crush. From holding a paper route, walking to school, or riding my bike to the local pool I didn't have far to go. You learn a town very differently on foot or on bike than you do when you have to drive it. Driving is the adult way to learn a town, as there are few shortcuts or backyards that you can wend through on four wheels. Having returned to Rochester as an adult I feel as if I hardly know how to get anywhere. I recognize all the landmarks but am unable to connect the streets between them. I realize now how at the time my world was really so very small.
Yet at the age of 13 when my family moved to Missouri I was pretty devastated. We started in Liberty in temporary housing and less than a year later we had settled in Lawson. Over the 3 1/2 years I lived there I developed new school friends, started driving, and worked in Kansas City where I dated a couple girls and discovered life-long friendships. Great times were around every corner in my expanded universe. So if I thought the earlier move was disruptive and painful it was nothing compared to having to move back to Minnesota 4 years later just before my Senior year of High School, this time to New Prague.
So while everyone else was excited (or perhaps dreading) commencement, or college, or moving on to whatever came next I was pretty much trying to put myself back together. I was in such an opposite place emotionally. While most teenagers just want to "fit in", hang out with friends, and make a little money while they do it I was locked in my own emotional conflict as a generally happy person dealing with a gaping emotional void while aimlessly taking the next logical steps in life. After High School I? Go to college I suppose. To do what? I rather enjoyed drafting plans for a house in shop class and the University of Minnesota has a good Architecture program so I guess I'll do that. Where should I go? Oh look at that, I inadvertently figured out where to go too. How convenient! Hmm... okay so maybe I wasn't that much different from the typical teenager.
I imagine reunions are cool for some. I would recognize some people, I would recognize some names, and I would even be able to put a few people to their names. There are certainly a couple people to whom I would enjoy saying hello but then what? And I dare say there are far more people that would remember me than I would of them. Not because I deserve it and they don't, but rather because I was living one hour to the next and that year was simply too short to bring me any real perspective. They have plenty of great memories without me and I have few memories at all of them. That's an unbalanced equation with pretty boring results during a large gathering meant to share memories and build on old friendships. This may seem a pessimistic view that keeps me on the outside, but I'm okay with that. Yes, I graduated from New Prague but my heart was never there. I got through it, perhaps even with many small kindnesses from my classmates. Even so some dark places in your life aren't worth getting in your car and driving for hours in order to relive a small portion of it.
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