Lately, courtesy of Facebook, I have been spending quite a bit of time revisiting my past. Some of it has not been terribly pretty, but, mind you, the wardrobe has rocked. I have reconnected with old friends whom I've not seen or spoken with in 25-30 years, and I now meet regularly with a group of people who went to the same junior high I attended in 9th grade. These evenings are always a strange cocktail of margaritas and memories.
There is a certain ease in being around people who were there when you were at your most insecure and awkward moments. You can't pretend or put on airs for the people who saw your bucktoothed grin before the orthodontist and Bright Smile got a hold of you; who fought the same battle against acne armed only with Neutrogena and Clearasil; who watched helplessly and laughed raucously as you puked up the Mickey's Big Mouth beer you were so coolly drinking only moments before.
Not all reunions are all sunshine, tequila and salt. There are, to be sure, the bitchy girls who grew up to be the bitchy women you knew they were going to be. They are the ones who, with a glance, or an aside comment, remind you that you are 40lbs heavier than your fattest day in high school and you are suddenly possessed with the burning desire to haul them off by their dyed hair and bitch slap them silly. Others are a complete surprise. People you never really had much in common with in your youth are suddenly fast friends in the adult world. The bygones of high school are bygones and you're damned if you can remember why you weren't best friends years ago.
The oddest moments, by far, are the ones when you encounter an old love. When you run into an ex, particularly one from a heart-wrenching teen-aged love affair, you are forgiven if your palms sweat and you get a case of the butterflies. These are the great romances that shaped your adult love life. A few weeks back I saw a range of emotions fleetingly cross the face of my old boyfriend, Chris, when he found himself seated at a bar with Yole, his first slow dance, moi, his first "serious" girlfriend, and Angela, his prom date. We were like a living timeline of his puberty. And in our collective middle age, I am sure a good reminder of why he's now dating beautiful young men.
At dinner the other night my new/old friend Stacy broke the news to me that in her early 20's she had dated my high school great love and heartbreaker, Andy. He was not the only boy she and I have had in common (I was quite the harlot in my youth and Malibu is quite a small town). But in this case I was simultaneously amused and bitterly jealous. My adolescent imagination had always figured that once he was finished with the girl he broke-up with me for, he had pined, for at least a decade, lived a wretched existence full of regret for the mistake that leaving me clearly was - and it was only because I had left the country and he didn't know where to find me that he hadn't come begging forgiveness and reconciliation. Never mind that by this point I had embarked on my decade long tour of the Boys of Europe and was madly in love with Alan the Englishman or was it John the Cypriot? Now, 25 years later I find out he was dating the girl down the street instead! The fates conspired, did they not?
Lest he feel singled out, Andy is not the only beau my adolescent fantasies consigned to a life of being single, living in their parents' basement and delivering pizza for Domino's while wondering what their lives would have been like if they had just stayed with me and, of course, trying to figure out ways to woo me back. Having never met any of my ex-beaus' wives or seen their homes, I have no real evidence to the contrary and so as not to torment them, I order from Pizza Hut.
Of course on the flip side is running into the hook-ups and one-night-stands that were better left forgotten. I have received Facebook friend requests that have, more than once, had me muttering to myself or messaging an old friend with "Did I sleep with him?" in the desperate hope that the answer is "No!" The insecurity of adolescence mixed with cheap liquor did not always make for good judgment, and thank heavens the drugs make for poor memory. I am also frequently grateful for the ignore function, with the click of a button I can continue to repress certain memories and the truth remains denied another day longer.
It is a good thing that I have a husband who finds the twists and turns of my trip down memory lane fairly entertaining, if not enlightening. He's had the chance to meet a handful of my former beaus including Chris and Jim (the boy to whom I donated my virginity) and the odd one-night-stand and is always amused. Of course I'm afraid that this means that I too will have to be magnanimous when I finally meet his high school sweethearts. Or maybe not, he's always been the better person and I'm still a bitter adolescent girl.
Showing posts with label high school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label high school. Show all posts
Friday, April 3, 2009
Saturday, January 17, 2009
History Repeats Itself, First As Tragedy, Second As Farce.
I regularly tease my sister Helen that she is reaping the rewards of her own youthful adventures by having to raise her teenage girls. And while she may be suffering a kind of karmic blow-back, she can take some solace in knowing that she's got their number and has a better idea of what they are going to do next than our mother did.
Yet, I feel sorry for my nieces for they will never truly know the joys of teenage rebellion. Parrish's daughters, the eldest of my nieces, spent their formative teen years in the backwoods of Santa Cruz, amongst a tribe of vegan new age warriors, dope smoking hippies and commune escapees. You can't rebel in a place built and inhabited by iconoclasts and social outcasts. It is pointless, and goes unnoticed by the town folk. My younger nieces, however, live in the same small town where we grew up, and they will face many of the same issues my sisters and I faced over 25 years ago.
They will try to rebel for that is the nature of being an American teenager. But they will always be thwarted because there is really nothing they can do, no outfit so outrageous, no stunt they can pull, that their mother or aunts have not already perfected, and in some cases invented. The ironic truth is that rather than defy their parents, they will be forced to emulate them - and where, pray tell, is the rebellion in that?
They can try to affect the rebel look, but that won't get them very far. Most of their adult female relatives have something pierced and sport tattoos, so that's a dud. Fashion forward? Nope, fashion backward. Today they pay a professional to put streaks of fun colors in their hair while I was getting demerits at Marlborough in 8th grade for using food color and spray-on dye to effect that chic "punk" look in contrast to my pastel colored uniforms. They are paying top dollar for jeans with the tears already put in them by Third World child laborers. Mine were made in America, as I had to do it myself. Black nail polish? Lots of eyeliner? Come on, can you get more 80's?
They can sport the look, but they don't have to do the social heavy lifting that comes with true rebellion. There's no sedition when you don't have to bear the mocking and the stares that come with really being a rule breaker. I was the one wearing men’s boxers to school who got pantsed in the Quad at SAMOHI in 10th grade by Kirk, Spencer and Todd to see if I was wearing boy's briefs as well. Now they sell boxer style shorts for women bearing designer names other than Fruit of the Loom. Their skin-tight straight legged jeans are made of stretchable fabrics. So they will not know the humiliation of having to have Parrish's boyfriend Nick hold my stomach flat while his buddy Eric zipped me into my Levis before I left for a party. By the time I had graduated high school I had worn every trendy outfit from Rockabilly to Mod to New Ro to Punk to early Grunge. All of which are back in fashion, or on the horizon. Had I saved them my clothes my nieces would be the envy of every girl in school, not to mention a few vintage clothing dealers.
Kids today may think they are on the cutting edge with their sexy photos on their My Space pages. Please. I got my first nude photo from Chris for Christmas in 9th grade, and he used a public photo booth at the Promenade Mall instead of a cell phone camera in the privacy of his bedroom. That was risk taking behavior! Sexting? Seriously? We spent hours crafting intricately folded, multi-colored, handwritten notes filled with all kinds of lusty language. Personally, I can never run for public office for fear of the notes I wrote in junior high school surfacing before a senate sub-committee on obscenity.
Sneaking around with boys? So not worth it. We were the last generation to have teenage sex where the only life altering worry from not using condoms was the risk of teenage pregnancy. Now, not only will they find that sex with teenage boys is lousy, susceptible to a myriad of diseases, but they are bound to get busted. While my boyfriend Andy's mom was too naive to check his closet and find me hiding there one fine suburban Saturday morning after sneaking in and spending the night, that'll be the first place my sister will check on her surprise inspections of their bedrooms. Tell their mom they are staying the night at a friend's house? Please! My sister refined that ploy in her youth, so she will know to call the parents, several times, and make it impossible to sneak out or will catch them in a flat out lie. Not to mention the handy GPS unit in their rarely parted with cell phones that will always give away their whereabouts.
Out and about doing something they shouldn't? Destined to be caught in the act, if not by their mother, then definitely by their grandmother. When my sister Parrish and I tried to hitchhike home from a party on Pt. Dume one night, who do you think was driving the first car to pull up to our outstretched thumbs on the PCH? Mom. When Jim (who was drunk) and I (who was tripping on acid) were making a half-hearted and feeble attempt to make out in the backseat of the Buick station wagon, who do you think opened the back of the car and caught us half-dressed, horrifying him and bumming my trip? Mom. There's no escaping the maternal instinct for bad behavior and it is even worse when the instinct is well informed by experience.
Drugs? Again, pointless. Unlike their grandmother back in the 80's, their mom knows the difference between the smell of dope and the smell of incense. D'oh! The powers-that-be have long since closed the drug drive-thrus of Venice that my girlfriend Julie and I frequented back in the day; so the kids in Malibu today are forced to buy their drugs from the local dealers, who are either people we went to high school with or are the same people we bought from in high school. Either way, it will get back to their mother before they can crack open the dime bag. Small towns suck when you're a kid.
And while I don't wish my sister many a sleepless night in the coming years, she will have to forgive me when I laugh and am less sympathetic than she would wish to her laments about the shenanigans of her teenage daughters, but it's like watching re-runs of M*A*S*H, the antics and angst are still pretty damn entertaining 25 years later, even with a cast change.
Yet, I feel sorry for my nieces for they will never truly know the joys of teenage rebellion. Parrish's daughters, the eldest of my nieces, spent their formative teen years in the backwoods of Santa Cruz, amongst a tribe of vegan new age warriors, dope smoking hippies and commune escapees. You can't rebel in a place built and inhabited by iconoclasts and social outcasts. It is pointless, and goes unnoticed by the town folk. My younger nieces, however, live in the same small town where we grew up, and they will face many of the same issues my sisters and I faced over 25 years ago.
They will try to rebel for that is the nature of being an American teenager. But they will always be thwarted because there is really nothing they can do, no outfit so outrageous, no stunt they can pull, that their mother or aunts have not already perfected, and in some cases invented. The ironic truth is that rather than defy their parents, they will be forced to emulate them - and where, pray tell, is the rebellion in that?
They can try to affect the rebel look, but that won't get them very far. Most of their adult female relatives have something pierced and sport tattoos, so that's a dud. Fashion forward? Nope, fashion backward. Today they pay a professional to put streaks of fun colors in their hair while I was getting demerits at Marlborough in 8th grade for using food color and spray-on dye to effect that chic "punk" look in contrast to my pastel colored uniforms. They are paying top dollar for jeans with the tears already put in them by Third World child laborers. Mine were made in America, as I had to do it myself. Black nail polish? Lots of eyeliner? Come on, can you get more 80's?
They can sport the look, but they don't have to do the social heavy lifting that comes with true rebellion. There's no sedition when you don't have to bear the mocking and the stares that come with really being a rule breaker. I was the one wearing men’s boxers to school who got pantsed in the Quad at SAMOHI in 10th grade by Kirk, Spencer and Todd to see if I was wearing boy's briefs as well. Now they sell boxer style shorts for women bearing designer names other than Fruit of the Loom. Their skin-tight straight legged jeans are made of stretchable fabrics. So they will not know the humiliation of having to have Parrish's boyfriend Nick hold my stomach flat while his buddy Eric zipped me into my Levis before I left for a party. By the time I had graduated high school I had worn every trendy outfit from Rockabilly to Mod to New Ro to Punk to early Grunge. All of which are back in fashion, or on the horizon. Had I saved them my clothes my nieces would be the envy of every girl in school, not to mention a few vintage clothing dealers.
Kids today may think they are on the cutting edge with their sexy photos on their My Space pages. Please. I got my first nude photo from Chris for Christmas in 9th grade, and he used a public photo booth at the Promenade Mall instead of a cell phone camera in the privacy of his bedroom. That was risk taking behavior! Sexting? Seriously? We spent hours crafting intricately folded, multi-colored, handwritten notes filled with all kinds of lusty language. Personally, I can never run for public office for fear of the notes I wrote in junior high school surfacing before a senate sub-committee on obscenity.
Sneaking around with boys? So not worth it. We were the last generation to have teenage sex where the only life altering worry from not using condoms was the risk of teenage pregnancy. Now, not only will they find that sex with teenage boys is lousy, susceptible to a myriad of diseases, but they are bound to get busted. While my boyfriend Andy's mom was too naive to check his closet and find me hiding there one fine suburban Saturday morning after sneaking in and spending the night, that'll be the first place my sister will check on her surprise inspections of their bedrooms. Tell their mom they are staying the night at a friend's house? Please! My sister refined that ploy in her youth, so she will know to call the parents, several times, and make it impossible to sneak out or will catch them in a flat out lie. Not to mention the handy GPS unit in their rarely parted with cell phones that will always give away their whereabouts.
Out and about doing something they shouldn't? Destined to be caught in the act, if not by their mother, then definitely by their grandmother. When my sister Parrish and I tried to hitchhike home from a party on Pt. Dume one night, who do you think was driving the first car to pull up to our outstretched thumbs on the PCH? Mom. When Jim (who was drunk) and I (who was tripping on acid) were making a half-hearted and feeble attempt to make out in the backseat of the Buick station wagon, who do you think opened the back of the car and caught us half-dressed, horrifying him and bumming my trip? Mom. There's no escaping the maternal instinct for bad behavior and it is even worse when the instinct is well informed by experience.
Drugs? Again, pointless. Unlike their grandmother back in the 80's, their mom knows the difference between the smell of dope and the smell of incense. D'oh! The powers-that-be have long since closed the drug drive-thrus of Venice that my girlfriend Julie and I frequented back in the day; so the kids in Malibu today are forced to buy their drugs from the local dealers, who are either people we went to high school with or are the same people we bought from in high school. Either way, it will get back to their mother before they can crack open the dime bag. Small towns suck when you're a kid.
And while I don't wish my sister many a sleepless night in the coming years, she will have to forgive me when I laugh and am less sympathetic than she would wish to her laments about the shenanigans of her teenage daughters, but it's like watching re-runs of M*A*S*H, the antics and angst are still pretty damn entertaining 25 years later, even with a cast change.
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