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| Rusted metal on beach at Amelia Island, FL |
Apparently Titusville High School Class of ’79 had their reunion last weekend. I can’t pretend I didn’t know it would happen as I’d blogged about its beginnings last year in my post 1979, in which I reminisced on that time in my life, especially the year.
I can’t remember now if I thought I might attend last year. But I pretty quickly decided I was against it by the time the date had been set.
In my post last year, I mused that the only real reason I attended my reunions was to show my former classmates that I am still alive. This could be because I was, to say the least, a bit troubled at that time in my life. I’d probably have been voted Most Likely to Wilt Into Non-existence Through Tears if they’d had that category.
But I’m told by at least one person in the know that I certainly didn’t come across that way to everyone around me at the time. I suppose I should be proud of my ability to hide what was going on in my mind. But since I didn’t have any clue myself, I guess it makes sense.
There was a rumor going around way back when that I had actually died. I think the rumor came about after my junior college trip to Europe when one of my fellow travelers whom I’d gone to high school with got the idea she’d saved my life.
We were getting ready to cross a street in some little European town. I stepped off the curb as a speedy little sports car came around a curve. This girl whose name I can’t remember put her arm out to stop me.
“I just saved your life,” she said.
I might have smirked. But as was typical for me back in the day, I said nothing. But in reality, no. She didn’t save my life. She stopped me as I stopped myself. And I wasn’t nearly far enough into the road, nor the car close enough to the curb, for this to have been an heroic move on her part.
Either way, I assume the proper response would have been, “Thank you!” But not only could I not tell her she was full of shit, I couldn’t say thank you. (But why would I if I didn’t think she’d done anything as dramatic as saving my life? Etiquette? Never been my strong suit.)
Anyway, though the rumor was that I’d died of some sort of illness, I imagined that this girl told the story and it had morphed via the “telephone game” into me dying of encephalitis or something equally gruesome.
Well, this year, I guess I don’t care if anyone I went to school with thinks I’m alive or dead. For most of them, I’d prefer they thought me dead, to tell you the truth.
I used to be connected with a lot of my classmates on Facebook. (You know, they say Facebook is for old people now…just sayin’.) Over the years I’ve lost a few in purges. But the Donald Trump purge was massive and devastating to my high school connections. Though devastating is not the right word…uplifting, enlightening, a joy to behold are more like it.
I had no idea so many people I went to school with were racists! Granted, at first it wasn’t obvious that to be a Trump supporter one had necessarily to be racist. At first, I merely realized they were idiots. Anyone who could support that horrible creature had to be an idiot. And I didn’t care for being connected on Facebook with idiots. And as the whole campaign and election trampled along, there were other problems. People who supported Trump had to overlook his vulgarity, his stupidity, his misogyny, his bullying, and cruelty.
And so many of them did. By last year’s post, I’d purged my Facebook of anyone who supported the monster. And so many of them were people I’d gone to school with or knew from my hometown. Unfortunately, I still hear from some of these people because I’m connected with my brother, who also went to THS. And from them, I’ve heard sad, pity-me stories about how wrong it is, and how upsetting, to be accused of racism for the mere fact that they support a racist. And, worse, I’ve heard people brag that as long as the economy is strong, they’ll support the lunatic.
What kind of person do you have to be to care more about your wallet than your fellow citizens, than your democracy, than decency itself? Not a good person by any means, I’ll tell you that.
Why would I want to attend a reunion with people like that?
Sure, there are a few left on my list. And there are probably a few that I’m not connected with on social media who aren’t Trump supporters. But when it comes down to it, I don’t know any of those people. Not even the ones still with me on Facebook.
They’re just faces from the past. Visions and memories of a time in my life that wasn’t so great anyway. My hometown, itself, reminds me of something I would like to forget. It reminds me of the narcissistic mother who still haunts my fragile self-esteem and my pitiful, weak minded father who remains devoted to Fox News and the man who has destroyed our country.
I don’t want to mingle with the past and pretend I’m friends with people I’m not. I was an outsider then, whether any of them remember it or not. And I am happy to be an outsider still.