It’s forced
me, nevertheless, to contemplate my status in life as an old fart.
It’s not
that I have a lot of friends from back then that I’ve been missing. Most of the
few I had are dead, scattered to the winds, or gone nutso. Still, it would have
been a surreal experience to reconnect with names from what seems like a
lifetime ago (because it was).
That lost world
of high school, with the angst and insecurities of youth, is as unrecognizable to
me as the grinning faces in the yellowing pages of my senior yearbook, full
of hand-written “best wishes” notes scrawled by fellow grads. “To a swell guy
with a wonderful personality” was a prevailing theme. Apparently, I was a “nice
guy” back then. Another: “possibly the smartest fellow
I’ve ever met.” Faint praise, really, since there were only 96 in
our graduating class.
I did go to
our 10th reunion, back in 1974, when none of us had died yet (to the
best of my recollection). I just remember one thing from the evening (aside
from an embarassing smugness I carried at that age). I turned down a chance to
purchase a gospel LP record album being hawked by my former high school
sweetheart, at a card table along the gymnasium wall. How is it that I can
still remember my exact words to her – “Sorry, Karen, but I just wouldn’t
listen to it.” – after all these years? Guilt? Perhaps, since she’s now one of
the dead ones.
I also
missed our 25th reunion. I then was living in Bullhead City,
Arizona, running a land development company owned by a friend, building
subdivisions in the desert. The night of the reunion, we were in Las Vegas,
having dinner at a lovely little restaurant, Café Michel. I called the reunion
from a pay phone in the lobby, and chatted awkwardly with a string of forgotten
classmates, ending with that now-dead old girlfriend.
I only
stayed in touch with a couple of those long-ago friends over the years. One
went off the deep end, and I’ve not heard from him since we lived in Ann Arbor
in the 1990s, thank goodness. Another has made it his mission on Facebook to
save my soul for Jesus. So far, no luck. Another died back in 2010, when I
wrote a blog at the time, “Last Man Standing”:
One by one … we lose our friends. Some get snatched for no apparent reason. Others check out with a chart full of bad habits. After a while you have to ask yourself: Why me? How did I survive all the accidents, booze, close calls, drugs, zealotries. You could fill an alphabet's list with all you’ve dodged. Why me? Was it healthy living? Good genes? Luck? Maybe it was God. I’ve always had people who said they were praying for me. Although that’s not something I do for myself, it couldn’t hurt. Good vibes can never hurt.
Such mysteries, these lives we pass through. One day I'm driving my parents' green, '54 Ford down Dort Highway on the outskirts of Flint, cruising McDonald's, trying to be cool, looking for directions for life. And now here today, sitting on my back porch in Oregon sunshine, sixty years later.
It turns out that old age is a gift; with it, I’ve discovered an exaggerated appreciation for life, and everything and everyone in it. So I don’t know. If we lived closer to Michigan, might I be headed with my wife (the love of my life) for that reunion in Flint next weekend? Maybe. It’s not like my calendar is chockfull these days.
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