If we share the same age (checks notes: 28) or you officially clocked out of high school in 2010, you very well may not have realized your/our 10 year high school reunion had passed. Since large gatherings are indefinitely on hold, the main and perhaps best part of a HS reunion, drinking too much and remembering some inside jokes with your old locker buddy only to forget them the next day, is gone.
With 2020 being nothing but one consolation after the other, we’ve at least been able to catch up online, in the form of a Facebook group…one that had no activity since being formed at or around the beginning of the last decade, that got some traction lately with the unfortunate passing of one of our class members.
‘Untimely death’ isn’t the term to use here and without going into it he died doing what he loved which I feel like is more than any of us will be able to say when it’s all said and done. I like to think this took away any suffering he might have had in his final moments.
‘Ice breaker’ isn’t really the term here either since my 2010 class knows each other but sometimes in order to reinvigorate a group of millenials, most of whom haven’t spoke or even thought about each other in 10 years, I guess it takes a little more than an arbitrary date to get us going again.
As some of the tributes came in and the dust settled somebody finally asked “hey what’s been up with everyone the last 10 years?”
Real quick TO, it was Ernest Hemingway’s birthday yesterday. Frankly, his writing was…eh. My recollection of the three Hemingway books I read was that his prose was actually so straightforward it was basically just recollections of stylized experiences with maybe some names and locations written in a slurry of brown liquor. What made Hemingway, Hemingway, or at least what carried his memory on until this day, wasn’t his work (okay I shouldn’t be too critical A Farewell to Arms kind of banged) it was the idea of Hemingway. A caricature of a classic ‘writer’ - a well traveled man with a knack for adventure and a thirst for boozer bigger than life…he seemed complicated but really was simple.
‘There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.’
I’ve felt the same way about Hunter S. Thompson (in regards, to somebody whose persona was more interesting than their work) because he was also another man who liked to travel for sport and was very regimented in what he drank and consumed.
Both were big champagne guys which hell, is always a good decision at the time!
And then it dawns on you that maybe a life of way too much consumption, especially with booze, isn’t healthy and maybe shouldn’t be synonymous with being passionate for life considering they both died early from complications of shooting themselves in the head.
While Hemingway’s work may not live on past my generation (Idk do they still teach Hemingway in High School?) maybe just who he was and some of his quotes is enough to keep him going all that bit further.
Ok back to High School.
Watching old names trickle in (and new last names for some) and seeing life updates in my Class of 2010 group, I was starkly re-reminded that even though it always felt like a normal teen thing to say and feel that ‘high school was the worst because of all the people’ it just wasn’t true. For me at least. People had their groups of friends and interests but things didn’t feel cliquey or taped off as mostly everyone seemingly meant well and when people saw my name pop up, well I hope they had some of the same rosy feelings. I hope my high school was a comfortable and safe place for everyone there and the keyword here is hope because I’m realizing how fortunate I was to have the experience I had that I know everybody did not. And if there was anything I did that got in the way of that well…just know if I haven’t paid for it already, one day I will.
I almost felt embarrassed forcing some of these previously held thoughts as I was warmed by these names I used to know on a daily basis and I even wanted to directly message a couple of them only to say like ‘Hey we we’re friends right?! Remember THAT?!’ and then I’d get booted from the group for being a weirdo.
Whatever bad memories I have of High School I realize more than ever it stemmed either from my own shitty personal decision making skills or things I wished I did or took more seriously. It’s like watching an old episode of Scooby Doo and realizing the person meddling the whole time and fucking everything up was actually just me.
“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”
Earlier this month I found myself watching a random season of Top Chef on Hulu because I guess I wanted to watch something I really didn’t have to think about (season 13 to be exact) and one of the challenges happened to be ‘create a dish representing who you were 10 years ago.’ Alas, something I was forced to think about and a decade ago it was the summer between high school and college and my diet was stuff from the Taco Bell menu that was $3 or less, Arizona Black and White Iced Teas and a bunch of shitty weed stuffed into shitty grape cigars. I was in a position where I was essentially killing time waiting for college, knowing I had something much better coming up on the horizon and during those two months or so I probably should have gotten a job but it was also easy to live like a frugal dirtbag in Northeast Indiana and go from pool to pool during the day to somebody’s backyard at night.
How do you make something that represents hope but also the fear of the unknown like moving to a city where you don’t know anyone and starting a new chapter in your life that isn’t just new, but extremely pivotal? How do you come up with that idea and execute it in under an hour?!
Anyways not going to do the work here but instead going to turn the exercise on you and invite you to think 10 years back and what you would make!
On other things I’ve maybe switched course on, I’ve been thinking about how nice it’s been to check in with my high school class and people that I actually know instead of Twitter users with 3 followers and shithead politicians and hell maybe I’ll become a Facebook guy again lol…really whatever I can do to keep myself off Twitter.
This time, I can say with my whole chest that it is absolutely the people on Twitter who make it a miserable place but hey it’s also my fault for starting every morning with it when I wake up. I started using the Screen Time function to really see how much time I plunk into there and even that doesn’t scare me off. It’s almost like I need to hit bottom and feel even worse…
I joined and wrote about NextDoor last year as a hell-app that turned your neighbors into a bunch of snitches and paranoid freaks, and as I’ve been spending more time there now that we’re bored online and home, I’m seeing less petty posts and bickering since we all have more real problems at hand and the stories I see now are neighbors rallying together to not make this time so miserable and doing stuff like mowing each other’s grass, looking for distant walking buddies, giving away plants & seeds, doing grocery runs, helping reunite missing dogs with their owners, etc.
I never took the time to even read the official description of the neighborhood and while I am coming up on an official year of living here, I felt the description to be accurate:
Southwood is a wonderful, eclectic South Austin neighborhood that boasts many families, retirees, animal lovers, home business owners, classic car collectors, musicians, teachers, computer programmers, artists, athletes, stay-at-home moms and stay-at-home dads. We have large trees, singing birds and one loud train.
I think back to even a year ago and how I was resistant to leave my old place and only part of town I’ve lived in this city and now just how in love I am with my new surroundings but I don’t want to write about it too soon.