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.
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.