You Don't Have to Be A Standout to Be Somebody

Thanks to Facebook I was invited to the 30 year reunion for the class I went to school with, but didn’t graduate with.  Midway through 11^th grade my family moved.  That didn’t matter to those who planned the reunion.  It was about the shared experience of growing up here.

There were over 400 who graduated from FHS in 1982.  I wasn’t involved in any activities, wasn’t athletic, or a standout by any definition of the word.  I doubted many people would even remember me.  In addition to that, the big hairstyle of that era has been replaced by a crewcut and mostly relocated to my face in the form of a beard.

That tiny insecure voice inside told me to be ready for someone to tap me on the shoulder and say, “You didn’t actually graduate with us, so you have to leave.”

It also told me to be ready in case someone copped an attitude with me, like a high school student would.  Health issues (some potentially fatal), life in some big cities, vision loss, life in a couple of large cities with vision loss have all created a much less easily intimidated version of me than the one people might remember in high school.  I’ve had to learn to stand up for myself over the years.

Then a different tiny voice told me that time and maturity hasn’t ignored all those people.  It told me to just expect a good time.  Never mind the high odds of me being the only legally blind one there.  Or the only one with a couple of transplanted organs.  I might not be the most enviable one there, but I was pretty sure I had the most atypical life.

Three weeks before the reunion, I had my gall bladder removed along with a hernia repair.  I was down 15 pounds, which would have been a blessing for some, but not in my case.  In just a few weeks I went from being in the best shape of my life to the same scrawny body I had in high school.  It was a chore to find clothes that didn’t hang off me.  Everybody wants to look at these things, whether it’s been 10 years or 70. 

Yes, I was a little self-conscious beforehand about being the only visually-impaired one there.  But, that's almost always the case and I'm finally coming to terms with it.  Besides, most of the others have to use reading glasses these days.  I guess that makes me a trendsetter.

I had a good time.  People walked up and spoke to me, so it didn’t matter that I couldn’t see across the room.  I said, “You actually remember me?” about a dozen times.  The usual response was, “Of course I do.”

When I said that to Ziva, followed by, “I was such a nobody,” she looked me in the eye and said, “Everybody is somebody.”  This from one of the cool, tall, pretty chicks back in high school who I didn’t really know back then.  I had approached her wanting to connect with a fellow writer.

The next thing I knew, I was having a great time with her, Jinger, and Lisa (more cool, pretty girls who were at the reunion) on Dickson Street.  I expected to see old friends that night, but never expected to make new ones of people I hadn’t known back then.

Since then, I’ve done a little revising on the history book in my head.  I already knew that sometime since 1982, I had become somebody.  It turns out you don’t have to be a standout to be somebody and more people notice you than you think.

Now I stand out without really trying and not for the reasons I would have chosen.  Now I’m somebody because of that.  But it turns out I was somebody all along.   

Life of the Party

Last Friday I attended a party at a local bar for people who went to high school here.  My family moved away midway through my junior year, but someone I knew from the local high school is a friend on Facebook.  She invited me and I decided to force myself to get out of the house and go, heat wave or no heat wave.

The bar is on Dickson Street, only a few blocks from where I live.  It was somewhat easier to see where I was going with my new glasses, but I took my folded up cane just in case.  I was anxious to find out how much better I could navigate a crowded bar—and to see a few people I haven’t seen in 25-30 years.

But they would have to see me first.

The ones I’ve reconnected with on Facebook would probably be able to recognize me from my photo on there.  There’s no trace left of the skinny, wide-eyed boy with shaggy, wavy blond hair in the helmet-head style of the late 70s and early 80s.  Of course, there would be people from several different eras there, not just my class.  It occurred to me that I might be one of the oldest ones there, which might make me feel even older than being there visually impaired with a cane would.

So, I was prepared for the possibility of not knowing most of the others.  But, we’d have a bond—we’re “natives” in a booming city where transplants easily outnumber hometown folk.  Just having a few dozen of us in one place is noteworthy in itself.

After buying a bottle of Michelob, I made my way to the back patio, where we were supposed to gather.  Instantly, my self-confidence vanished.  Poof!  Just like that.  It was gone faster than an ice cube on the hot pavement in front of the bar.

Groups of people laughed and talked in small groups all around me.  Now and then, women squealed upon recognizing old classmates.  I overheard a cluster of women near me and it turned out they were from the Class of ’75.  This bolstered my confidence a bit, knowing I was probably somewhere in the middle, age-wise.

I stood there, looking around and listening intently to more than one conversation at once and hoping someone would recognize me and speak to me.  It wasn’t as if they all knew each other.  People who graduated in 2008 are old enough to drink now.  There could have been at least a forty year span of former FHSers there.

Standing there in the middle of all that social flow, like a rock in a stream, made me self-conscious.  I moved to the edge of the crowd and discovered some plastic patio chairs.  Perfect.  I could sit there, relax, be out of the way, and observe without being too conspicuous.  I reminded myself I wasn’t as invisible as I felt and that everyone else could see me better than I could see them—something I’ve grown accustomed to, but may never be entirely comfortable with.

One thing I had to keep in mind was that I only went to school a year and a half with the kids who were from the other junior high across town, which decreased the odds of being recognized.  I had four and a half years with kids from my junior high from different elementary schools.  That wasn’t a very big window of opportunity.

“You have the right idea,” a female voice said.  I followed the direction it came from, not sure if she was talking to me.  She must have seen the confused look on my face.  “The chair,” she continued. 

“Oh, yeah,” I said.  “Pull up a chair.”

Her name was Patty, from the Class of ’77.

“Class of ’82,” I said, not bothering to explain the last part of my high school experience was a few counties away.

“You’re just a baby.”

Sure, I knew better than that, but I liked hearing it.  It was nice having someone to chat with.  I dropped a few names of older kids from my old neighborhood she might have known.  None were familiar to her.  It was a fairly large school even back in the 70s.

Now and then, she commented on people around us and I explained I don’t see well.  The cane was folded up in my lap, but I leaned over it like it might try to fly away.

“The men just get more handsome with age,” she said.  OK, she could keep talking like that and it would suit me just fine.  No doubt she was referring mostly to the men she’d known in high school.  Or maybe she was referring to men in general.

At one point, she indicated everyone else wore name tags with the school colors of the junior high they’d attended prior to high school. 

“Where are they handing them out?” I asked.

She described a woman in the distance, but I couldn’t see her.  Maybe a name tag would have helped people recognize me.  There just had to be someone else there from “my” era.  My beer was almost gone and I wasn’t sure how much longer I was going to stay.  The heat had made me sweat it out as fast as I’d been drinking it, so I didn’t get help in the self-assurance department I would have gotten on a cooler day.  Because I have a transplanted pancreas, I’m limited to one drink a week.

Patty excused herself and went on her way.  Either she was leaving, saw someone she knew, or was totally bored by me.  Stop it, Jim!  I wish I didn’t beat myself up like that.

I finished my beer and made my way back to the front door.  Even though I was headed east, away from the sun, it was harder for me to see than when I’d arrived.  Everything was bathed in yellow-orange glare, which made it all look flat and two-dimensional, like a photograph.  It’s ironic that the worst time of day for my vision is just before the best time.  At dusk, when the sun slips behind the hills, I see with amazing clarity.  This time of year, it stays light quite a while after the sun makes an exit.  It’s why I gladly endure the heat.

After bumping into a pole just outside the bar, I unfolded the cane and used it to help me get home.  People offered help when I crossed a street with a traffic light, thinking I had no vision at all.  As much as this town has grown since I went to high school here, it still has the polite feel of a smaller place.

On the way home, I thought of how little credit I’d given the other people at the patio.  This was at George’s Majestic Lounge, the oldest—and maybe the friendliest—bar in Arkansas.  They would have spoken to me if I’d spoken first, especially if I had remembered to smile.

Then I remembered how much more self-confident I was when I moved back from Florida twenty-four years ago.  After being around so many Northeasterners who’d landed there, I had a tougher skin.  If I tried to talk to someone at a party or a bar and encountered “attitude,” I almost always let it roll off my back, not letting it affect my evening or how I felt about myself the least bit.

Of course, I could see fine then.

Still, I need to get back to that level of confidence.  People can’t just glance at me and have any idea of what I’ve been through.  There are few who aren’t fascinated and in awe of it.  This isn’t a place where people are callous and rude to strangers, especially the disabled ones.

There may not be a trace of that skinny, wide-eyed high school boy left, but the more athletic, sophisticated one from 1987 is there just beneath the surface—but with more maturity and a story to tell.

Ebb and Flow of a College Town

Today marks a noticeable change in seasons in the life of a college town: graduation day.  Thousands of (mostly) young, fresh-faced adults will fill the basketball arena and do their best to pay attention to the commencement speaker and ignore their hangover, the muttering people around them, and their nagging hopes/fears for the future.

I guess they’ll be texting and twittering, something we couldn’t conceive of when I was in college

It was 25 years ago this week that I was in the same place.  Yes, I’m really that old.  A quarter of a century ago, (ouch!) I sat there, just wishing all the talking would stop, they’d hand me my diploma, and I could find my family, who would then take me to eat at a nice restaurant.

That restaurant isn’t there anymore.  Fayetteville has changed as much as I have.  The enrollment at the U of A is up about 50% from what it was then.  More importantly, Arkansas—especially this corner of it—has much more to offer a recent college grad.  In the 80s it was an often-repeated joke that Arkansas’ biggest export was college graduates.  That sheepskin doubled as a passport—or exile—depending on how someone felt about the Land Beyond the Border.

The class of 2011 is entering a national economy much worse than when I did, but a much healthier one locally.  Many of them will have the option of sticking around and working in a field using their degree.  For decades, their predecessors have stayed (or returned) here to work as the state’s most overqualified waiters, cashiers, and delivery drivers. 

This place can be addictive.  I wonder how many of today’s graduates will take flight to distant opportunities, only to return years from now—like homing pigeons.  I’ve seen it happen dozens of times and did it myself.  If that Bohemian college town bug bites you, there’s no getting rid of it.  But why would you want to? 

Sure, the money may be better in some big city.  But, even in the big city, it isn’t as easy to remake oneself as it is in Fayetteville.  This is where people come here to get an education—to improve themselves and expand their horizons.  There is a certain energy and vitality in a town dedicated to helping people do that.  The air is alive with all that youthful optimism and curiosity.  Over the years, the students and college town have shaped each other, to their mutual benefit.

Having grown up here and lived here on and off after college, I’ve seen the cycle repeat itself many times.  Each fall, the tide brings in thousands of naïve, cocky, ambitious freshmen experiencing the first sweet taste of freedom.  Each spring the tide carries away thousands of weary, hopeful, ambitious seniors with brains jammed full of book smarts and fond memories.  They don’t believe us when we tell them these are the best days of their lives.  I know I didn’t buy it.

When I was in my teens, I thought 22 would be the perfect age to stop at, if that was possible.  I would be old enough to drink, but finished with college.  Young enough to still be attractive, but old and experienced enough to be responsible and level-headed.  I was more or less right.  Even now, 22 is the only year I’d do over again even if it meant not knowing any more than I did then.

For the next three months, Fayetteville will breathe a sigh of relief and move at a slower pace.  It will quietly rest and replenish the energy it needs to survive the other nine months of the year.  It will belong to us “civilians” again—the future, former, and non-students. 

At this time of year, I want to play the part of wise old sage.  It’s tempting to remind these hatchlings that life doesn’t always go exactly as planned, that “a totally awesome job/car/house” won’t fall in your lap the day after graduation.  There was a song that was played for a very brief time in the late 90s.  It was kind of hokey, but I’ve included a link because it’s full of advice to graduates.  It’s the kind of advice most of us ignore when we’re still young enough for it to do the most good.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwVVpwBKUp0