Some Words Sparked By My High School's Upcoming Reunion

My old high school's 50-Year Reunion (delayed a year by the pandemic) is upcoming in October. Received an email about it, with a link to a website that helps reunion committees organize the things. Posted a few things on my profile there, which I though I'd share here (where, honestly, it's more likely to be read).

First was a synopsis of my life since high school:

After high school, I went to ASU for several years, served in the US Army for three years, went back to college for a while, worked as a legal secretary, spent thirty years with the US Postal Service, then another dozen years working in the security field. Finally took full retirement in March 2020, which was pretty good timing to start spending most of my days at home.

Also in there, I somehow ended up with a wife and stepson. Hilde and I have been together for 45 years. I don't believe in miracles as a general rule, but that comes as close as anything can. I'd always expected to probably end up one of those wild-eyed hermits who live in a shack in the deep woods.

And... my interest in science fiction (which was a source of distress and disapproval from teachers and family alike, back in those days before every blockbuster movie was sci-fi; my Twitter profile reads "Mom always said reading science fiction would rot my mind, ruin my morals, and lead to hanging out with disreputable characters. Thank God, she was right.") lead to occasional success with writing the stuff. I've had about twenty short stories published over the years (including several in the mystery/crime fiction genre), edited two anthologies, and...

...wrote an episode of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION. ("Clues", 4th Season, 1991). That moment when the writer credits roll by is what I call "My one-point-five seconds of fame."

After managing to sell that script, I spent several years trying to sell movie scripts; some got expressions of interest from and meetings with production companies, but no one ever put money or a contract on the table.

(Scriptwriting is tremendously difficult to break into, and almost as hard to stay in. Now that I'm retired, I'm thinking of giving it another shot.)

There you go; fifty years in just over three hundred words.

The reunion site also asked for my "Favorite School Story". Wel-l-l-l-l, "favorite" isn't a word I've ever applied to my high school experiences. And after fifty years, my fucks-to-give supply has grown low enough to not whitewash what was mostly an unhappy time:

What I most remember about high school is that a good day was being just numb, instead of miserable. I remember feeling disassociated from the school, the teachers, and the other students. Not so much ostracized (though there were definite moments of that) as irrelevant and invisible to almost everyone else.

I had "acquaintances" with other students; some were even "friendly acquaintances". But there were only a very scant handful of people I considered actual "friends".

Remember Richard S. Cantor, the journalism teacher? He let the journalism room he oversaw be a refuge for outsiders and weirdos like me. Not sure I would have survived high school without that safe space to occasionally retreat to.

(When I first got onto the Internet, my first "find people you knew" search was for Mr. Cantor. It led me to his obituary; he'd died of cancer a few years before, still in his early 50's. I'm sorry I was never able to let him know how much his empathy meant, to me and others.)

Sorry if you were expecting to read a feel-good story. For some of us, high school wasn't the wonderful experience a lot of people like to pretend it was.

Out of a graduating class of over 700, only a few dozen have registered on the reunion page so far, and only a handful have bought tickets to the reunion dinner. And (as with previous reunion years), almost everyone that I might be interested in seeing or talking with again is on the "Missing" list. So I'm not likely to attend.

A Few Thots On Some Old Tarzan Movies

Hilde and I have been watching old Johnny Weismuller Tarzan movies from the 1930s & '40s, via DVDs from Netflix. Not all were available, but we’ve watched TARZAN AND HIS MATE, TARZAN FINDS A SON, TARZAN’S SECRET TREASURE, and TARZAN’S NEW YORK ADVENTURE.

TARZAN AND HIS MATE was filmed before the prudishness of the Hays Code began in 1934, but released into theaters as the Code was starting to be put into effect. Maureen O'Sullivan's very skimpy outfit (see below) came in for some side-eye from Code censors, but the biggie was the nude swimming scene with O'Sullivan (actually her stunt double) and Weismuller (who kept his loincloth on). Only early theater audiences saw the original swim; a more modest version was substituted for later showings. The Netflix DVD we watched included the original version.

These…are not great movies. There’s a nostalgia factor in re-watching them. (I saw a lot as part of Saturday morning tv-watching growing up; it was cartoons in the early morning, then adventure and monster movies on the local channel in later morning.) With modern eyes, I can’t help noticing the many faults. Even overlooking the “of their time” ethnic stereotypes, the writing, acting, direction, etc. are, for the most part, pretty damn stiff and unimpressive. And there are a lot of plot elements recycled from movie to movie.

Some takeaways:

• The greatest dangers in the jungle are from stock footage
• Never trust a man with a thin mustache.
• If you’re an old man with a sense of decency, make sure your life insurance is paid up.
• Pretty sure Boy grew up to become The Professor on GILLIGAN’S ISLAND, where he recreated many of the devices in Tarzan’s treehouse.
• Where the hell did Tumbo go?
• Cheeta is an asshole.

(a somewhat shorter version of this piece first appeared as a comment at File 770)

Is The... *A* Future Finally Imminent?

Hilde and I were able to get Covid-19 vaccine shots recently. After spending the last year of our lives in mostly a holding pattern, we may finally be able to slowly begin resuming a more normal pattern of life.

April 8th will be two weeks after my second Pfizer shot, and I’ll feel (somewhat) more secure about adding more errands out to more locations more frequently. (Keeping trips outside the house to 1 or 2 a week for the last year has sometimes been a hassle.)

One of the first things to do is make an appointment for a new eye exam and new glasses. On Twitter and elsewhere, I've posted various eyepos I’ve made trying to read small print on my phone. From a few says ago: Misread someone tweeting “my bed covered with dice” as “my bed covered with lice”. Just a bit startling until I took a second, closer look.

(I actually had “new exam & glasses” on the post-retirement to-do list last March, but then the country began locking down just before I retired, and any non-essential appointments were pushed back. For a few months, he said, laughing weakly. I needed new glasses a year ago, and need them more now.)

Also going to try going to the gym every day if I can. And by “going to the gym” I mean walking to the EOS Fitness place that took over the old Safeway grocery's space last year, and walking back home again. (Nope, still not going to go inside any gym yet.) That’s about a 3-mile walk altogether, which maybe will help shed the ten pounds or so I’ve gained in the last year for some inexplicable reason.

(I felt kind of sorry for that EOS location. Their “grand opening” was in the middle of rising alarm about Covid-19, when people began avoiding gyms and fitness centers in droves. They were only open for in-person attendance for about a week before they had to close their doors and try to transition to online video classes for customers, for the duration of the lockdown. One of their ads during that increasingly dire week proclaimed “WE HAVE TOILET PAPER!”)

The local libraries have served as a good indicator of whether it’s safe to ease up on social restrictions. They were locked down for several months, with only curbside pickup. My local branch currently has a “mini-library” set up in one of their meeting rooms, with a smaller selection of the most popular books and DVDs on its shelves (you can request a hold for a title from the full inventory; patrons just can’t go browsing in the full public spaces yet).and with mask and social distancing guidelines enforced. Local politicians (rom city-level up to Arizona's dumbass governor Doug Ducey) are pushing for full re-opening, but librarians have been pushing back successfully so far.

I’ve only been back to the local library branch once in the past year, instead using Overdrive to borrow works (mostly audiobooks, and an occasional ebook) to sate my library jones instead. Miss being able to drop in and browse the shelves when I want, and especially the monthly meetings for the local writers workshop.

(After a few months off, the writers workshop moved to Zoom when it became clear the library meeting rooms we used wouldn’t be available again for a long… long… time. But it’s not quite the same as meeting in person.)

And of course my outside trips will still be masked and distanced. If Arizona gets down to zero Covid deaths for a week, I might (might) start thinking about the possibility of bare-faced gallivanting. Zero Covid hospitalizations, even better. Zero cases, best scenario of all.

But it looks like there's slow and mostly steady progress toward a post-Covid future. It would be even steadier if there was less masking-resistance, consistent social distancing, and end to anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, and fewer politicians trying to wish a post-Covid economy into being by lifting restrictions too early and too fully.

(a slightly different version of this piece first appeared as a comment on File 770)

From September 2020, when my
"Crazy Old Homeless Guy" quarantine-look
was at its peak.