Memory-All-Day

Those folks who knew us when…

Do you remember your grammar school buddies? Junior high and high school? Does your recall traverse back only as far as college days? (If so… What were you smokin’?)

Venturing into my High School’s Mega Reunion (classes from ’63 to ’67) last weekend was an exercise in testing my memory and trusting my gut.  Some of these folks and I had the treat of seeing one another five years ago at the same hotel – only the name was changed and perhaps the décor. Other faces I could not place… but one face placed mine!  Yvonne F. looked at my name badge and asked if I lived in Echo Park (I did) and did I do ballet (I did). “Mindy” she exclaimed, eyes wide, “I’m Yvonne! My sister Candy and I lived on Avon Place.”  I gasped and got goose-bumps two inches deep from head to toe. “Yvonne! OMG! How did you figure that out? I always wondered what happened to you two!!” We had lost touch and didn’t even know we were in the same high school until 45 years later! How sweet and somehow important to reconnect after all these years!

Remember those kids whose hands always shot skyward – even for the trickiest answers? Belmont High was no exception. The same hands go up each time- volunteering to get the job done. Marvin from North Carolina and his beloved Ellie, after delegating calling/contacting duties to several of us in L.A. months before the event, drove all the way across country days before the reunion to make sure it happened according to plan. Barbara came all the way from Japan to ensure the entertainment was spot-on. Her beautiful daughter and a couple of the daughter’s dancing friends performed a robot-themed piece fabulously – complete with mid-air flips and impossible-to-hold-poses. Randy made sure the live music was tight using guys from Belmont’s Jazz Band. Great music. I especially enjoyed dancing with Bruce to Mongo Santamaria’s version of “Watermelon Man” and later hearing “Louie, Louie.” Ernie made a perfectly timed and comically adept MC and raffle ticket reader. We all kept looking at our ticket stubs -  willing them to change to the winning number for fabulous door-prizes!

The committee was able to keep costs lower than any other reunion of the same magnitude I’ve heard about… $60 or $70 per person depending on when we signed up rather than $100-$150 range of other reunions.

One of the sweetest treats for me was chatting with Bruce whom I’ve known since kindergarten. He was one of the best tap-dancers in all of Elysian Heights Elementary yet had no clue how totally cool all the sixth grade girls thought he was.  We compared notes on how distressing school dances used to be in Jr. Hi – with the girls all lined up on one side of the gym  and the boys on the other. There was intense pressure by seventh grade to “be cool” whatever that meant! The not knowing what cool was, and whether or not we were, made for PSP (Perpetually Sweaty Palms). Does any one of us have an unselfconscious or compassionate view of ourselves-ever? Or is each of us uniquely and totally un-cool?

The kindergartner’s way of making connection is perhaps a bit like two amoeba bumping into one another, feeling what the other has to offer and either dancing for a while or moving on to find a more suitable encounter. The snot quotient is high; lunch box contents determine cool. In Jr. Hi the stakes are much higher and the element of “cool” is uppermost in everyone’s mind re: “where do I fit in this hierarchy of popular versus nerdy kids?” We daren’t make the wrong move for fear of being ostracized or linked with un-cool elements.

By High School we are slightly more jelled… we know who the Science Club and Leadership Organization kids are, ROTC, Debate Club and Chess Club, Jocks, Musicians, Dancers, etc. Still, our faces, even in our senior photos, are about as doughy as the Pillsbury Boy and so are our personalities… not yet fully jelled.

So here we are 45 years later with features more chiseled by life experiences, our bodies slightly less angular perhaps. We’re certainly seasoned, definitely more discerning. We each carry comfortable automatic “belief structures.” But throw us all together and there’s a magic alchemy that allows us to morph into our more amorphous selves and lets us bend a little further than our “sixty-something” bodies are accustomed to being able to bend, and invites our acceptance factors to soar; our inclusion impulses to multiply as  memory snatches return of sweet encounters with everyone in that hotel ballroom at some point during our (usually) three-year tenure at Belmont. We remember exactly where we were when JFK, Bobby and Martin were shot. We are again an eclectic and diverse group; a mini-United Nations respecting all members of the tribe. This truly is worth the price of admission. It makes us young and idealistic all over again and I want more time to explore this time warp!

And the TEACHERS!!! What a thrill to see so many of them! Choral Director Mrs. Shapiro and her husband even brought stacks of photos from the productions of Finnian’s Rainbow and Flower Drum Song and made available to those of us who were in the shows photos of our young, dewy-eyed, doughy selves. When I saw the photo of me dancing the part of deaf mute “Susan” to Ray Rodriguez’s “Leprechaun” a complete Gestalt washed over me and I could smell the slightly mildewed Paper Mache’ and stinky tempera paint of the scenery – to say nothing of the hormonally-ignited flop sweat with flames stoked by difficult tour jetes’!

Belmont was an inner-city school. Many of our grads and even pre-graduate young men went off to fight in Viet Nam. Too many of them didn’t come home or came in boxes.

This Memorial Day I say,  

“THANK YOU” to all those who went into the service, whether you came back whole, broken, boxed or not at all. Your sacrifice is part of what afforded us one hell-of-a-good reunion. We still miss you and wish you could’ve been here with us.