Blog Posts

Trading Amber for Gold

When I left my hometown for college, I fell out of touch with everyone—except for one friend—who didn’t go on to college.

It’s not that I was a snob, someone who looked down on people who went to work immediately after graduation. Kids from all economic brackets funneled into my huge, suburban public high school, and if I had a bias, I would have felt more natural affinity with the kids from lower middle-class families whose parents did not have degrees. My father went to college, but my mother never finished high school.

My school offered college-track as well as vocational-track classes. I was in the college-track group, by dint of good grades not by dint of good planning. I had barely an inkling of college and no mentor to help me assess my options for a future. I’d never even heard of the SATs until it was time to take them.

In my junior year I began the two-year AP English program, and I was suddenly among kids I had never met before. As I got to know them over the next two years, I learned that quite a few lived in the much bigger houses on the much nicer streets in our community. Looking back on it now, I see that junior year was when my high school class began sifting out by economic status more than by any other factor. The kids who lived in the smaller houses, duplexes and apartments on the narrower or noisier streets were no longer in many of my classes.

The AP kids were competitive. They cared about everyone’s grades and test scores, not just their own. It wasn’t cool to like AP English; the teachers were tough, and maybe that’s why students measured their performance against how others in the class were doing.

I don’t remember caring what other people’s grades were, but I do remember I didn’t just like AP English, I loved it. I thrived, in fact. From the first assigned book, The Scarlet Letter, AP English was an epiphany for me, a creative outlet and an intellectual challenge.

At some point during that year, I found out several kids considered me a teacher’s pet. I was confused and taken aback. Among other things, being a teacher’s pet implied insincerity on my part and gullibility on the teacher’s part. If my sincerity were in question, I knew there was no way I could convince anyone that I’d honestly enjoyed the stylistically dense and relentlessly symbolic Scarlet Letter. It’s a Geek Moment that has stuck in my head all these years, although I’m sure I’m the only one who remembers it. That’s the trouble with high school: strife gets trapped in amber. We might not remember who sat next to us in homeroom for four years, but we’ll never forget the kid who was a jerk to us once. These fossilized memories have a vivid durability, but it’s difficult to determine their actual worth.

After college I moved around a lot—every couple of years well into my 40s—so it would have been hard for anyone to keep up with me. I went to my 10-year high school reunion but missed the others.

When I turned 50, I felt a strong curiosity about the kids I grew up with. It wasn’t nostalgia, a longing for the past; I wanted to know them in the present, if possible. I wanted to know how they’d aged in 30-odd years and what they’d experienced: joys and accomplishments as well as sorrows and self-knowledge. I’d finally reached a stage of home-address stability, and I had a desire to bridge my present and my past. I felt flimsily connected to my past. So I friended a handful of former high school classmates on Facebook. A few more found and friended me. Strange to think that my midlife project is trying to better know some of the people who once knew me.

I’ve worried that catching up on lost decades will be an impossible feat, as if lives are like novels that must be read chronologically, chapter by chapter, in order to learn the plot, understand the symbolism, meet all the characters. Turns out, it doesn’t work that way. One night while chatting on Facebook, my friend Pam offered some comforting advice related to a problem I’d mentioned. Her advice was perceptive, supportive, just what I needed. I thanked her in all caps. I meant that I was grateful not just for what she’d said, but for the friendship that began so many years ago, for being a friend then and for being in my life now. Past and present were connected, quick as a lightning strike.

Later I apologized to her for my brevity, explaining that I’d fallen back on familiarity and assumed she’d understand my “THANKS for being friends” without elaboration. She said the apology wasn’t necessary; she’d understood what I meant.

In the Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne is shunned for not conforming to Puritan protocols. She knows what the rules are and bucks them anyway. She accepts the penalty, leaves her community, but eventually returns. I never thought of myself as identifying with her character in 11th grade. But maybe on some level I did.