The "Other" Class of 1968

I graduated high school in 1968. In 1973, which should have been our five year reunion, none of the class officers organized anything, so we non-leaders took over. We reserved a room, invited everyone we had kept in touch with to a meeting, talked up a reunion, passed a hat and off we went. We ended up having a six year reunion – unusual, but some of us didn’t want to wait until the ten year mark for a party. After that, the reunions came on every five year mark and I co-chaired for about 15 years, then gradually stopped going. My co-chair was a wonderfully social and keep-in-touch type of person. I’m fairly anti-social – I like people, but from a distance. Unfortunately, she didn’t know everyone in our class of around 600, and after a while, it was the same people over and over – usually the high school popular crowd, of which my co-chair was a member. If other, non “in crowd” kids showed up, they were welcomed, but no one really knew them and many eventually stopped coming. Nobody’s fault.
Last year, another member of our class decided we needed a party to celebrate “The Year of Turning 60”, which was an event that happened to most of us this year. He was one of the brainier kids in school and started this movement on Facebook and eventually got quite a group of people fired up about the party. There were some smart kids, some band geeks, GAA girls, Drill Teamers, athletes and nice kids who just showed up to high school, had a few friends, but were not necessarily leaders or well known outside of their immediate circle. Many of them hadn’t attended a reunion recently and the opportunity to talk amongst themselves on Facebook, reconnect and get excited about a party was a great catalyst. Even if you didn’t know someone in high school, you still have that experience in common and it makes for a connection. They had a great party in August and had about the same number of people attend as attended the “official” reunions, but with just a few “crossovers”. My former co-chairman was one of the crossovers and she told me that when she went in, she realized she hardly knew anyone! They had attended our high school at the same time as her but most of them were strangers to her because she hadn’t known them in high school. This was the “Other” Class of 1968.
I’m sure there are even more “other” Classes of 1968 out there and if they feel the need to re-connect, I hope they become involved in whatever social network they feel comfortable using. We went to school with so many interesting people and for whatever reason, we didn’t get a chance to know them. This is another chance to get acquainted. You might meet your new best friend. And you might be like me; glad to see who’s out there and what they’re doing, saying hello and then retreating back into my shell.

Goldfish

The dead squirrel referred to previously is not my first brush with getting rid of dead animals. My son has a fairly dismal record with pets.

This is a picture of him at 2 and a half years of age, gazing fondly at our goldfish. Unfortunately, he was kind of a “hands on” kid and gazing fondly only worked for about 10 minutes. After that he wanted to reach in and hold on to the goldfish. He was instructed not to touch the fish, but, again, he was not the most obedient of children. After owning the fish for only a couple of days, it was discovered floating in the bowl, a victim of too much love.

He had another goldfish at about age 11, and I think he won the fish at a school carnival. We got a bowl, put in water, rocks, little diving guys. And the next day, the fish was dead. So we motored out to Walmart and bought another fish, which turned up dead again the next day. We went back to Walmart, complained about the defective fish they had sold us, and got another one for free. It, too, was dead the next day. Once is bad luck, two is a freakish coincidence, three times is serial murder. Upon further investigation, it was found that the rocks my son had put in the bowl came from our gravel driveway, which I regularly sprayed with Roundup, to kill the weeds. Another mystery solved, another pet buried beside the house.

Squirrels

Recently I had a close encounter of the squirrel kind. I came home on a Monday afternoon and walked out into my back yard to survey my kingdom. Just as I got to the garage patio, I noticed a squirrel laying in the grass. (For those of you non-squirrel people, this is not normal behavior). On closer inspection (5 feet away) I saw that the back 1/2 of his body was kind of smashed and his tail looked like he'd been caught out in the rain. And there were flys crawling around on him. He looked good and dead.

As a single parent, I have conducted more than a few "animal funerals". So after a couple of ladylike "ewe's", I told myself I was a grownup and could take care of this situation without calling an uncle or cousin. I went in the house and got a paper bag (for burial - didn't want to use a plastic bag, or it would take 100 years for the squirrel to biodegrade). Then I went into the garage to get a shovel (to pick up the body from a safe distance). As I came out of the garage, the squirrel picked up his head and looked right at me. After hastily propping the shovel against the garage, I speed-walked back into the house and locked the door behind me (in case the squirrel proved to have super powers and followed me and tried to open the door).

Then I called an uncle. He said to leave it alone and it would be dead by morning. My aunt said to hit the squirrel with the shovel. She's a little bloodthirsty, but did not volunteer to come over and do the deed herself.

The next morning the squirrel had moved a little, but was still in the same place. The following afternoon, Wednesday, I went out and banged the shovel on the cement to see if I could get a rise out of the squirrel. No activity and he was starting to smell. So shovel in hand, I scooped up the dead animal, gently placed it in the paper sack and rolled the top down, then, holding my breath, speed-walked to the trash can and deposited the sack inside.

Luckily, my trash goes out on Wednesday night. I'm sure the trash guys swooned when they took off the lid of the trash can and got a whiff of Rocky. I imagine they had a nice, tasteful memorial for him out at the landfill.

Memories

Memories are highly individual. Eyewitnesses to an event can have widely differing accounts of what happened. Life is like that, too.

My mother gets mad at my sister, brother and I when we talk about events that she doesn't remember and accuses us of making them up. I find myself irritated with my own children when they talk about things they did that I don't remember. After all, I was the perfect mother, always aware of where and what my children were involved in............ apparently not.

People remember what is important to them. But lots of things happen to people that are not earth shaking to anyone but them. So while I remember standing on top of the brick wall in the back of our Palais house, watching the boys playing over the line, my mother will tell you I never stood out there, seeing and being seen.

I remember some of my second grade year, because that was the year we moved from Iowa to California. I remember getting lost coming home from school in Redondo Beach - and my mother remembers it too, because she was waiting and worrying. I remember Chris Donovan singing a song during a second grade talent contest - something I would have loved to do, but would never have had the courage to actually do.

I don't remember third grade at all. My fourth grade teacher was Mr. Weed, but other than the fact that he was cool and we'd visit after school, I don't remember anything I learned that year. Mr. Trollah was my fifth grade teacher and he would write long essays on the board on different subjects and we would copy them into folders. I don't remember the topics, but I was trying to write slanted forward instead of backhand, and I would turn my folder almost upside down trying to slant the letters forward.

In fairy tales, the princess usually falls into a deep sleep sometime during the story, until her prince comes and wakes her up to get on with the rest of her life. I think our lives are like that, in that we sleep walk through parts of our life, doing what needs to be done, but nothing that is so significant that it wakes us up and turns into a memory.

So try to make memories whenever you can. And forgive those around you who have memories that are non-existant to you, but important to them. Just because you don't remember it, doesn't mean it didn't happen.