On the eve of a 20 year reunion...

A 20 year reunion which I won't be attending.

My school years are such a strange product, it's difficult to really make sense of them even this far out.

I started out as a pretty regular, if extremely shy, girl that did pretty well in school but wasn't much of a stand out at anything.  Reading comments from grade school teachers on my earliest report cards, everything seems pretty normal.  When we moved from West Godwin Elementary to Godfrey Lee Elementary, however, something changed.  I'm not sure really what it was.  Obviously, I was torn from a school life that I'd only just begun to make my own.  At Godfrey, I slowly made new friends, but it was harder, probably because we were older and getting ready to go through puberty.  I'm not sure that I'd say it was worse or better.  It was just different.  Instead of rollerskating at recess (when you could still do that), we did gymnastics on the steel bars throughout the playground.  Fourth and fifth grade were the years of being a "safety" and riding bikes everywhere. 

Then came Doug Hoogerhyde.  He got sent back from 6th grade to 5th grade.  He was a legend because he was older.  During this time, I had a pretty major crush on A.J. Morris (I even left a "love" letter in the spokes of his bike wheel one day).  Doug didn't matter much to me.  I just knew that he lived close by (around the corner actually...but our worlds are so narrow when we're young...around the corner might as well have been another planet).  Honestly, Doug wouldn't have mattered at all if I hadn't been bored and wandering around the neighborhood.  I'm not sure how it happened, but we started hanging out...and yeah.  It's not something I want to go into now.  Not because it's embarrassing.  It's just a long story, and not my point.

Suffice to say, middle school was dramatic.  Middle school was so dramatic, that I ended up dropping out of my freshman year at Lee High School.  Looking back, even though I left Lee, it never really left me.  Although all contact with Doug was cut off, I was still involved with other friends....and my heart really never left that old building on the border between Wyoming and Grand Rapids.

And, then I enrolled at Wyoming Park H.S.   Let's be honest.  I didn't belong there.  It was much too clean.  It was much too normal.  It was much too "high school."  The kids were too well behaved (even the bad ones).  It was very "Breakfast Club."  I was very lost.  Maybe that sounds like it was a disaster.  The funny thing is....it wasn't.  It was just a haze.  I made friends....but only a few really important ones.  I have memories, but they seem so small and transient.  I look at pictures from those days and remember them....but I remember them from the outside. 

I suspect that I'm not the only person that has this type of impression.  I honestly can only remember a few teachers from Wyoming Park.  Mr. Black because he was annoying and creepy but smart...Mr. Barnes because he was a Christian and easy to be around...Mr. McDowell because he was just out of school and his brother was just a year older (and good looking)...and that's it.  I remember the teacher who led the drama club (of which I was only the student director) and the girls track team my senior year (of which I was only the manager).  I can't remember his name though.  And that's it.  I remember presences...and classes....and where I would sit...and how light or dark the room was.  Nothing more of those people that were supposed to have such an impact.  I don't remember homecomings or football games....or basketball games....or hall decoration...or any of that stuff.  I wasn't involved in it.  Now, I have some regrets...except that were I to go back....I don't think I could do better.

I was too full of guilt for being the girl with the secret pregnancy, the secret baby, the secret adoption.  I was too sure that nobody would, not only understand, give me a real second chance at normal.  I was the girl with the asterisks.

What does that mean now?  Not much.  I'm not sure what there is to come to terms with.  Probably my largest regret is not investing more in those earliest friendships.  Over the years, I've seen the joys and pains of my peers.  I've been so impressed by the people they've become, and so proud to have been caught in their orbits for a time.  Even so, I'm still an outer planet in that high school solar system - not because anyone sent me spinning away, but because I was too afraid to fly closer.

So, on the eve of a 20 year reunion of which I will I will not be attending, I just have to say...I'm grateful that, although my school years are still muddy and not as rich as they might have been, there is a group of people that are worth my regret.