I went back to my old high school today. Had to make a business pitch to the principal, who ironically graduated from said high school with my brother’s class a couple of years ahead of me.
I don’t think I was fully prepared for the emotional groundswell. There is no question I’ve come a long way in the years since that time, but it’s amazing how certain memories can turn long dormant scars into open wounds. It doesn’t help that the school seems to have existed in a bizarre time warp for the last 25 years. Wow. 25 years. That’s a really long time, and it’s disturbing that I can still be impacted by things from that long ago. I guess that’s the safety barometer. We hold onto the memories of the bad so as to avoid encountering them in the present.
I swear some of the same posters are still on the wall. The same trophies in the same display cases. Sure, there’s been expansion and additions, but the core infrastructure is the same as when I waltzed out all those years ago with no desire to ever return. I stopped and checked out the plaques where my brother’s name is etched as National Merit Scholar and Salutatorian. There was good and bad growing up in his shadow — I certainly got some grace and leeway with teachers and staff because of him, but it was also confirmation of what mom was doing such a good job of drilling into my head at home. He’s the good one. He’s the golden boy. The smart one. The good looking one. The strong one. The genius. You’ll never be like him.
I tried to be like him. I’m not an intellectual midget, but my brain tends to steer towards the liberal arts side of the spectrum. He’s mechanical engineer who went to all the right schools and did all the right things. I eventually learned that we were destined to take different paths. He was a band geek, I was a choir boy. He wrestled. I played basketball. Or attempted to, that’s a different story for another time. I also had the added joy of hearing from all the girls how hot my older brother was. Yet further confirmation of the messaging driven home by mommy.
I also paused to peer up at our class photo hanging in the hallway. It took me a while to find myself. I checked all the places where I thought I might be, the groups of people that I might be sitting with. Not so. I never really fit into any group. I was always trying to fit into every group. Eventually I found myself in that picture. Sitting in the middle of everyone, yet the only one that doesn’t have someone sitting next to him on both sides. Somehow the camera managed to document the void and emotional emptiness of all those years. And just like most pictures from my childhood, I look sad. Probably because I was sad.
All that sadness enveloped me once again as I floated like a specter down long forgotten hallways. The cafeteria where I experienced the daily shame of begging for change to get a little something to eat. The basketball courts where I floundered in fear and mental weakness. The weight room where I desperately tried to add soft tissue to my boney frame. The band room where I spent a lot of time but never quite fit in because, well, I wasn’t in band. The auditorium where as a skinny sophomore I got to fully inhabit the role of class geek by being cast as Eugene in Grease. (At least in that arena I was able to experience some later success and happy times.) There it all was. The shame, the embarrassment, the self-loathing, the hatred of who I was then, and the questioning of whether I’m really any different after all these years. The adolescent boy that lurks inside with all his latent insecurities likes to try and wrest control of the neural pathways and see just how much contempt I can muster up for myself.
The very entrance itself was a cruel reminder of days gone by. I spent countless hours in front of those double doors, restlessly checking every 30 seconds to see if mom was there yet. She never liked to be bothered to pick me up from practice or school activities. It was such a hassle to make the the 5 minute drive, and those darn coaches could be so insensitive to her sleeping and self-medicating schedule. Sometimes they’d keep us late to finish up a drill. Sometimes a rehearsal would run a little longer than it was supposed to. As a parent now, I realize this is the way of the world and part of your job is to sit in parking lots waiting for your kid to meander out of the building. Mom could not be bothered with that. She’d drive up to the door, and if you weren’t immediately sprinting out into the car, she’d get pissed off and drive home. Then she’d smack you around and tell you how ungrateful and rude you were when you finally walked through the door. And God forbid a friend had to drop you off. Then you’d catch holy hell for making her look bad and inconveniencing another family.
Like most things, it was a no-win situation. Sometimes I’d try to leave practice early, which coaches generally frown upon. Plus, you never really knew if mom was going to be there anyway, so if you leave practice early and half an hour later the coach walks by and sees you standing there, it doesn’t look so good. Some days mom just wouldn’t bother to show up at all. Some days she’d show up an hour or two late, for no good reason. Again, you’d better be waiting, and you’d better make record time out to the car before she pulled away with rubber squealing. I learned that no matter how long you’ve been waiting, it wasn’t long enough. So I spent hours upon hours in front of those double doors on high alert. Don’t go to the bathroom. Definitely don’t hang out with you friends — you don’t want to be caught socializing when you should have been anxiously awaiting your chariot. Nowadays, coaches are required to wait until the last kid gets picked up. That wasn’t the case back in the day. It wasn’t uncommon for me to be there until the last of the maintenance crew was closing up the building. Then it was time to begin the long walk home.
I ticked off the distance on my speedometer once a few years back. I can’t remember exactly, but my house was somewhere around 2-3 miles door to door from the school. Certainly not a long distance, and not a hard walk, even with whatever gear I had to lug with me. I managed to make the jaunt in record time once — in full dress clothes for a choir concert mom couldn’t be bothered to drive me to. But, the road was a pretty major thoroughfare, and there were no sidewalks. Thank goodness it wasn’t in today’s age of distracted driving or I’m sure I wouldn’t have survived. The real problem came in wintertime. Besides the obvious cold, there’s this white stuff called snow. And in these parts, we get lots of it. Plus, I’d often be making the trek in shorts. I know, that sounds ridiculous, and it was. But, I had learned a lesson. It was one of those days where I had been waiting for a few hours and decided that mom wasn’t coming, so it was time to start walking. I went to the bathroom to change into some pants, she (allegedly) showed up in that window of time, and I wasn’t there. I learned that day it was better to make the walk in shorts than to suffer the additional wrath from missing my ride.
You wonder why I just didn’t walk every day? Here’s the twisted logic from mommy dearest. “It’s a busy road, and it’s not safe. I don’t want you getting hit by a car.” So, she wouldn’t let us walk. She wouldn’t even let us ride our bikes 1/4 mile down the road to the cul de sac that had sidewalks. I have no idea how she expected me to get home. I wasn’t allowed to walk, I wasn’t allowed to get a ride with a friend, and depending on her mood, she wasn’t ever going to show up. I tried creating a teleporter, but unfortunately my artsy fartsy brain was better at making cool renderings than the actual sciency stuff.
So, I’d wait. And wait. And then I’d make a decision that was going to be wrong regardless and brace myself for the consequences. There was no cell phone to pass the time. No games to play. I would watch parents wait patiently out front while their kids messed around with friends in the hall for a few extra minutes. Nobody seemed to mind. I’d see kids walk out together and get in the same car. Apparently there was this thing called carpooling, but it sounded like deviant behavior to me. I’d get used to coaches asking me on the way out the door, “You got a ride?” And I’d lie and say, “Yes. Mom’s on her way.”
Maybe that’s where I started to hate waiting. I hated that cold linoleum floor and the hard brick walls. I hated the ubiquitous white-faced school clock whose hands never seemed to move. I hated the doors constantly opening as people filed in and out, sending a new blast of cold air over me every few minutes. I hated looking out the window, wondering if that next car would be the one, and it never was. I hated the anxiety of now knowing what to do, and yet knowing that whatever decision I made would be wrong. I hated that I knew every brick on the wall and crack in the floor, because I had counted them over and over like a prisoner locked in isolation.
It was not a fun walk down memory lane this morning. On the bright side, I didn’t have to wait for anybody when I left today. I didn’t have to walk home. I walked right to my car and tried to enjoy a moment of gratitude for that closed chapter in my life. Perhaps that’s a little bit of healing balm for old wounds.
Tonight I’m going to take my daughter to her volleyball match. I’m going drive her there with a smile on my face, and I’m going to sit and cheer her on. I’m going to ignore the fact that there is work to be done and a basketball game that I really want to watch, and I’m going to be present for her. When she’s done I’m going to let her goof off with her friends for a minute. Then we are going to drive home and chat about mundane things. She’s never going to have to worry about having a ride, and that’s one infinitesimally small way the cycle stops with me.
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