Postcard from Lee's birthplace

Look what arrived in the mail today.  Not from Postcrossing, I've been slacking on that and thus my mailbox hasn't been festooned with postcards from around the world.  But from one half of Pike Schemes!  And the best part is that I've already read the blog post.  Thanks Sara!

Essay: Thoughts on High School Reunions.

Telling people I was planning to attend my 20-year high school reunion elicited a range of responses.  They ranged from the general query, “Oh?” to the incredulous, “Why would you want to do that?”  It also was an easy way to find out if the person I was talking to had any plans to attend any high school reunion, because they all volunteered that information to me.  It seems that feelings about reunions, much like feelings about high school, are not a middle-of-the-road type of thing.

Here’s my advice on high school reunions:  If you attended your high school for any length of time, you should go.  Not so much for you, but for the people who want to see you.  And believe me, there are people who want to see you.  We had a guy transfer in second quarter of senior year, poor thing.  I can guarantee that he will never attend any reunion, probably because his loyalties are with his other school, but also I’m betting he thinks no one remembers him.  But I still wonder how he’s doing, and he was only there for a semester.

I’ve realized, though, that a person’s reaction to the thought of attending a high school reunion says a lot about who a person is.  For me, there was no way I wasn’t going.  This despite the fact that I hated high school itself.  I always felt that geography had trapped me in the wrong school and that I was made to go to the smaller more artsy school where they could wear hats indoors and it didn’t seem to be so goddamn focused on male sporting achievements.  But I lived over on the other side of town where football (and boys' basketball) was king and so that was the school I attended.  So high school was no fun at all, in some respects.  However, I loved (and also hated a bit) the throngs of people I attended school with and there was no way I wasn’t going to catch up with as many of them as possible.  For me, the human connections were the important part of high school and I value, and regularly think about, how those connections shape me today.

My boyfriend has never attended any reunion and does not spend time thinking about the past.  In fact, when I ask him specific things about his high school experience, he pieces together a vague story which always ends with him shuddering; happy to be far away from that place and person he was.  I’m betting there are schoolmates who would love to catch up with him, and I’m sure he wouldn’t be opposed to that if it happened organically.  But to travel across the country to visit a place he can’t really remember isn’t something he wants to do.

Another friend insists that no one will remember her.  She did graduate early and move on to college at sixteen, but I question if she is truly forgotten.  She went through school from elementary to high school with the same people, she was in band, and she herself will tell me stories, using first and last names, about people in her class.  If she can remember them so clearly, I’m betting her name comes up in the “where the heck is she?” conversations at reunions.  I think her high school story is that high school wasn’t relevant to her life—that she faded into the background and didn’t really emerge until she got out and went to college.  It’s her story and I can’t change it, but I don’t believe it for a minute.

I’ve had other people tell me that they have no desire to see anyone, that they had no connection, that they hated everyone they went to school with.  I can’t know their high school experience, but I question the sweeping generalities.  There was not a single person to connect to?  There was not the person who sat behind you in French class and passed notes back and forth?  There was not someone you only sort of liked that you rolled your eyes with as to the general ludicrousness of the situation?  I’m betting there were connections somewhere and it's worth it go back and revisit those connections.

My reunion was incredibly fun, even though I had the same conversation repeatedly.  Here, I’ll summarize: “I’m married and have X children, my job’s okay, life is good.”  There were variations (not married, divorced, no kids, job not good, etc.) but that was the gist.  Over and over again we told our stories and they weren’t that different.  But the fact that we were telling them to people who had known us before any of those things came about made the conversations different, connected in a way you can’t achieve with friends you’ve made since that time.

Go.

45RPM: "Dreams to Remember" "Breathe,"

Where I match the song to a specific memory

In a corner of my living room are two objects that hold what remain of my once-extensive cassette tape collection.  The sliding drawer fake-wood holders contain several cassingles (the inferior replacement for the 45RPM record) and the many mix tapes I can't bear to part with. Most of the tapes I made myself, culling songs from friends collections, dubbing them from my own tapes and even, when desperate, recording them off of the radio.  A few are from friends who also specialized in the magic of mix tapes.  Two of them are from boyfriend #4.  He was the only one of my boyfriends who ever made me mix tapes* and they were good, mostly because his taste in music was more sophisticated than my own.  There's a bit too much Frank Zappa, it's true, but there are some real gems on those tapes, two of which are above and still hit me just the way they did when I first hear them:  straight in the gut, weakening the knees.

Boyfriend #4 was a summer thing between freshman and sophomore years of college.  He didn't want to do the long-distance thing, so we broke up when I went back to school and he moved on to a woman named after a mountain in California, or--as I preferred to think of it--a brand of soda.  That was rough on me, and I pined a bit, listening to the songs he had given me on a fairly regular basis.  It occurs to me now that these two songs are perfect breakup songs, and I delight in how the object of my affection supplied me with the musical sustenance to get over him, right from the beginning of our relationship.



*Current boyfriend made me a mix CD at the beginning of our relationship, but in my mind, the mix CD is a completely different beast.

Something tells me Kayla is no longer serving customers.

I found this on the ground on the way to the Max stop.  I'm pretty sure this is a Fred Meyer name tag and I'm guessing from its bent state and location on the ground that Kayla and Fred Meyer are no longer together.  I hope her future endeavors serve her better.

Three sentence movie reviews: White House Down

I go into Channing Tatum movies with no expectation because sometimes he is very good and sometimes he gets all clenchy-jaw-declaiming-lines type acting.*  I'm happy to report that this falls into the very good category not just for CT's acting, but for a very well-plotted action movie.  It was incredibly fun to see how the story kept the characters in the White House the entire time, plus the rest of the cast was quite fun too.**

Cost:  $7.00
Where watched:  Living Room Theaters (which seemed odd, they are very art house/foreign/independent.)

*He's been much better, of late, but Side Effects was a return to his bad acting of yore.
**Maggie Gyllenhaal was a complete bonus, Herc from Friday Night Lights was one of the terrorists, I love that computer guy whenever I see him and Richard Jenkins is always a welcome sight.

Poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2013/white_house_down_ver8.html

Books read in May and June 1990

In the back of one of my journals are reviews of books read by me, written by my 15 year-old self.  I was clearly vacillating between the "greatest books everyone should read" list and the YA section of the library.

Here's one page:

5/12/90
Salem's Lot Stephen King
If you like vampires read this.  This also has about 40 characters and I could never remember who was who.  It was also very long. It didn't hold my attention well. [3 stars]

5/29/90
Too Young to Die Lurlene McDaniel
Everything's going great for Melissa until she gets cancer. [4 stars]

Uncle Tom's Cabin. Stowe
This is possibly the worst piece of literature I have ever read. Harriet Beech Stowe writes as though she is talking to a two year old.  Bleech.  I couldn't finish it. [1 star]

6/10/90
East of Eden. John Steinbeck
Good book. [4 stars] Too hard to give a summary on.  Too much happening.

6/12/90
Angel Dust Blues. Todd Strausser.
I like this guy.  He makes things seem so real.  About a rich kid who becomes a drug dealer.  And who gets caught. [4 stars]

Three sentence movie reviews: The Sapphires

Just what the doctor ordered for a summer afternoon.  Good songs, solid story, mostly female focus and excellent performances by all.  It was also interesting to find out at the end of the movie that the actual people the story was based on were pretty big activists for aborigine rights.

Cost:  $3.00
Where watched:  Laurelhurst, with mom.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/intl/australia/2012/sapphires.html