Things were always changing in my younger years. The Beatles had just stopped being the Beatles, or so it seemed at the time. Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were both killed at a time they had so much more to offer, at least potentially. The Vietnam War escalated. College tension increased. Riots and protests happened more frequently, and the whole world was watching. Then, peacefully demonstrating, students were shot at Kent State. The first Earth Day happened. We landed on the moon. I had a girlfriend. I was accepted to Cal, Berkeley. Then I was alone again. It was a really strange time. And it all seems like it happened to someone else now.
It was probably a natural thing for me to try to be different in some way when I was in high school. I grew my hair long and tried to grow a beard. I may have looked like the stereotypical hippie, but that was as far as it went. I dressed appropriately, I went to classes, got good grades, and did not smoke or drink. I did not touch anything that was not legal. It was just the hair that was odd about me.
I remember one time walking up the street where we lived, and an older lady walking towards me on the same side until she saw me. She detoured around me, walking out into the street so she would not have to share the sidewalk with me. I was dressed neatly, always had clean, brushed hair. It did not matter to her, though. It did not matter to her how well I was doing in school or that I was going on to college. She would rather take a chance of being hit by a car than have me any closer. She had the most extreme reaction to me in general that I remember from that period.
On April Fool’s Day in my senior year, I stuffed my hair into a wool cap and went off to school as if nothing was different. People came up to me in shock that I had cut my hair. It was a fairly cool day, so no one seemed to question why I suddenly refused to take off this cap. My head had to be cooler with the lack of hair, so it all made sense to them.
Suddenly, all of the sports jock-types, who had also started growing their hair longer, came up to me in awe of the change. ‘Why?’ they would ask me. Why did I do it? A couple of my teachers made comments like ‘welcome back to the human race’ to me. I took all of these comments in. I thanked my teachers for being concerned about me. I told the jocks I just needed a change. No, go ahead and keep your hair long. I do not care that some of you, as recently as last year, used to imply that you thought I was gay because my hair was long. My girlfriend and a couple of my closest friends were in on the joke They helped make it more believable for everyone else.
I walked home and took off the cap.
The next day, a miracle of miracles, my hair had been restored. I thought the punch line the next day was hysterical. Not all of them appreciated my sense of humor.
I did a couple of other practical jokes in my high school years. One time, I pretended to have just lost a contact lens in a hallway that was soon to be inundated by students passing by on their way from one class to the next. I had a bit of help here, too. A couple of students walked by before the rush and stopped to ask me what I was looking for. They were soon helping to look, and they were the ones who tried to stop the flow of passing students. Once it got crowded, I just lost myself in the throng of people and left them to look without me. I had never worn glasses at the time. I guess that detail never occurred to those who initially stopped to help me look.
Every Friday, fliers would be posted in the hallways advertising a party that night, or whatever night it was. Some of them would say that the parties were “unbustable,” meaning they involved drinking and other unsavory or illegal activities, but rest assured, no police would come to stop it.
Once, I set up an imaginary “unbustable” party. I had never gone to one of the advertised ones, but I had plenty of examples of what to say in my flyer. And I had known a perfect place for such a party. At least, I knew a place out in the hills on the map with existing roads, up to a point. After that, who knew? I hand-drew the map to the party spot well enough to get the party goers to the point that the road disappeared on the real map, and then I just drew a couple of more turns- totally free of any link to the real world. I added the details- the time and the day. Of course, this was the extreme party of the year, and would be totally “unbustable.” I guaranteed it. I made a copy or two and put them up in the usual spots.
I am not sure how many fell for my fake party and tried to follow my directions to it on a map that was only real to a certain point, but I did hear a few people I knew had been to several other parties like the one I advertised, talking on the following Monday morning. They were so disappointed because they had never found the party they had planned to attend the previous Friday night.
People generally liked me when I was in high school, but I was not always aware of it, or of them. Going to reunions as I have over the decades, the one thing that impresses me is how many people come up to me and thank me for being there for one reason or another. The odd thing is that there are an awful lot of them that I really do not remember having been there at all.
The first reunion I attended was the tenth. It started then. I had not even gotten in the door when a brother and sister came up to me, whom I had no memory of at all, even in that short ten-year span. They thanked me for my contribution to the yearbook and to their memories. At the same time, some had totally ignored me, even though I had classes with them and sat near them. They had no time then, and no time now. One thing that has happened over the span of reunions, though, is that more and more people come up to me who I never thought would have given me the time of day back then. And those people thank me, just for being a calming influence, or for my work in the early days of organized recycling, or for the pictures in the yearbooks.
Some women have even asked me why I never asked them out. Do you remember me? I remember you. It’s funny what you find out at reunions. One woman I had a crush on back then came up to me and greeted me in a way that made me wonder what the hell I had missed back in school. It was nothing really, just friendlier than I remember us being back then. It turned out that she thought I was my brother. I knew it! I do not think we look that similar, but she may have been drinking a bit at the time. One other lady, whom I had actually considered asking out back then, asked me why I had never asked her out. She then told me that my brother had asked her out, and her mother had forbidden it. Not that she had really been interested in him in that way. My brother again. I was not that humiliated. He wasn’t in our class, so why would he have even been there?
At my thirty-year reunion, prominently displayed at the class sign-in table, was a collage of photographs of “senior memories.” One of the pictures was from the senior class edition of the newspaper. In our paper, we had categories like senior couple, most humorous guy or girl, etc. I am sure many high schools have similar traditions for the graduating class. Seniors were asked to submit and vote for who they thought should be in each category. I was voted to be the most mysterious man. The most mysterious woman was named Jane. And, she was so mysterious; I had to admit that I really did not know anything about her when she showed up for her picture to be taken with me. She did not know me either. The perfect mysterious couple. For our photo, since the category was ‘most mysterious’ and I was the photographer, I asked her if she minded if I took pictures of our shadows on the ground. Wanting to be mysterious, or maybe just not wanting her picture in the paper, she agreed. It had to seem to others that this was a really creative way to do this picture, but it was really out of necessity. There was no one else there to help take the picture.
It is interesting to discover how many in my high school class remember me. I would not have thought anyone really would have a reason to, aside from the pictures I may have taken of people, events, or places that they now have in their yearbooks- if they still have them. I did not think of myself as someone that anyone would remember back then. I must have had my moments, though.
There were several, though, who only wanted information about what my brother was doing now. I wonder if people in his high school class asked him about me?
Memory is the Key 