That time, back in 2009, when I felt confident
Memories of a 20-year high school reunion, part 1
In fall of 2009, as the time of my high school reunion approached, I felt charged with a confidence that nigh bordered on giddiness.
After all, I cut quite a "respectable" figure in my late-thirties; that is, I held a quite respectable college-level English instructor job, and was married with two young children, which further enhanced my aura of respectability. I had just published my first novel, and had begun finding an audience online, writing about cultural and literary matters. Things weren't perfect in my life, but they were certainly agreeable, which was to say, respectable.
Thus I regarded the notion of attending my 20-year reunion with flippant, insouciant aplomb. Why, after all, should I be apprehensive? I hadn't seen most of these people in years, and likely wouldn't see them much, if at all, afterwards. Nor had most of them meant all that much to me even when we were classmates in the late 1980s.
I had, after all, only attended the school, a ritzy but somewhat flaky and "hippieish" intown Atlanta institution called The Paideia School (the sort of place where you call your teachers by their first names, and are allowed to attend class barefoot), during my junior and senior years. I had "escaped" what I regarded as the conservative conformity of my suburban public high school in 1987 for what I felt would surely be the greener pastures of Paideian freethinking.
The result was, honestly, a mixed bag. I did form some friendships, one of which proved to have a lifelong bond, and in spite of what now strikes me as a truly off-putting and wrongheaded custom of "first name" familiarity between students and instructors, I must admit that some teachers at Paideia proved to be excellent educators. Still, the overall culture of the school never exactly agreed with me. (Elaborations here would take things too far afield, but suffice to say that permissive parental morals, unattended teenagers, and abundant wealth don't always result in the most wholesome of outcomes.)
In any case, those days were well behind me now. I remembered how things used to be, when I suffered from extreme social anxiety. Being alone amongst a group of my peers was unbearable. During my junior year-- since I had moved to a school in which I knew nobody-- I suffered the indignity of eating lunch alone as a nearly daily occurrence. It wouldn't have been so bad, or really bad at all, had I managed to secure and occupy some cozy nook on the school's campus where I could remain unseen until lunchtime was over. But feeding my face on a bench in the outdoor commons area, even a bench that was relatively remote, still left me exposed to the eyes of my classmates, which was intolerable. Letting them see me sitting by myself meant that I would be assessed as a kind of freak, perhaps not to be loathed so much as (still worse) pitied, for his apparent friendlessness.
Admittedly, it could be said that I was in part just being the typically overly-dramatic adolescent, thinking I was the center of everyone's negative attention when the bulk of people just honestly weren’t noticing or caring. On the other hand, when you're an adolescent, you aren't entirely wrong to suspect that your peers are taking you in when you're revealing yourself to be a social outlier, and reaching negative conclusions therefrom.
And after all, I must have projected a certain “charity case” aura, since I recall getting what amounted to a "pity invitation" to some girl's birthday party. It came via post (snail mail was the only game in town back then). My mother, upon informing me that I had received a letter, tittered with excitement. When I opened it, she immediately asked, "So what is it???" in a tone of such overexaggerated enthusiasm that I felt for a moment like an adorable puppy she was welcoming home from the kennel.
Of course, it was no use trying to tell her, or my dad, that this invitation from "Cynthia" to attend the celebration of her sweet 16th (my mom's animated response was no doubt set off by the feminine name in the return address) didn't really signify anything remotely positive about my social life; that this girl in fact barely knew me, that though we had one class together never even really had a conversation, that, though Cynthia seemed nice enough, she in truth wasn't a potential friend or date or anything of the sort; she was just a seemingly kindhearted person who felt bad for me, the quiet kid who was always sitting conspicuously alone during lunchtime. I just shrugged and let my folks believe what they wanted about my ostensible newfound social acceptance at The Paideia School.
I did accept the invitation to attend the gathering, out of a sense of politeness I suppose, or maybe because I wasn't quite proud enough to turn down pity-invites. Upon arrival, I found that, as expected, I was the sole guest who wasn't already significantly acquainted with the birthday gal. Sitting amongst them all in Cynthia's living room, sharing her birthday cake with all of her actual friends and watching her open her presents (I must have brought her something but I have no memory of what it was nor clue as to what it could have been), I felt like an imposter: an invited imposter, maybe, but no less a party-crasher for all that. I was sure that everyone else present half-wondered why I was even there.
But again, that was years ago, as a misfit teenage loner. Now (as previously stated), I was a published author, and I had a wife, and two kids of my own, and a college-level English instructor job! A far cry from my lowly, pathetic former self, surely... But even putting those ostensible "status-markers" aside, I was pushing forty years of age! Obviously, I no longer dwelt in the hypersensitive realm of tortured adolescence. I could, hypothetically speaking, eat lunch alone on a bench in the commons and not be phased in the least by anyone noticing, much less reaching disquieting conclusions.
Or so I quite indulgently, and shortsightedly, assured myself.
(to be continued)
Andy Nowicki is the author of several books, most recently The Insurrectionist and Muze. Visit his Youtube channel.