Junior high reunion: What’s 45 years between frenemies?
How can I describe the experience of going back to my old junior high for its 50-year reunion last weekend?
“Surreal” is one word, as classmates in their mid-’50s huddled in the same snobby cliques I remember from the disco era and studiously avoided eye contact.
Ha, ha. Is this really how it’s gonna be, you posers?
“Jarring” is another word, watching people in late middle age dressing like approximations of their teenaged selves — ripped jeans, lip gloss, shaggy hairstyles — as their rounded bellies and balding heads confirmed that, sadly, time stands still for no one.
And “shocking,” as the only one of my former teachers to show up — possibly the only one left alive — told sexually risque anecdotes that seemed to betray some unwritten teacher code.
Come on, Mr. B, I know time has passed and we’re on an equal footing, more or less, but in my mind you will always be the earnest young science teacher whose clean-cut attitude was an inspiration. Follow the rules, for crying out loud.
In the end, I can’t get too worked up. Despite my cynicism, it was good to see these people — even the ones who forgot I existed — to reconnect with my roots, to gauge my progress against those whose DNA and formative influences are identical to my own.
And there were revelations. It turns out the social hierarchy we painstakingly constructed 45 years ago — nerds here, freaks there, jocks and cheerleaders in the middle — served a useful purpose.
It’s become the template for our lives, something to revel in or rebel against, a solid base from which to compare then versus now.
And believe me, the losers were not the ones we thought.
But let’s not pull any punches: Middle school in the ’70s was a Darwinian killing field, where bullies roamed with impunity and chants of “Fight! Fight! Fight!” were the order of the day, no matter how desperately one pounded on locked school doors for teacher assistance.
Ah, the teachers — never have such dysfunctional power-mongers exert-
ed such totalitarian control over such a captive population as they did between 1972 and 1975 in my north Toronto junior high.
These were the halcyon days before political correctness, before educators were held accountable for their behaviour, so when they locked us out at lunch hour in the frigid cold, we had no recourse but to stand there and freeze.
When they bonked us on the head with volleyballs for talking in gym class, the word “assault” wasn’t part of our lexicon.
When Madame Racine — may she rest in peace — shouted “DETENTION!” every time I twitched an eyebrow during Grade 9 French, no one summoned the board psychologist to assess the emotional damage of such controlling manipulation.
And what the hell was going on with Mr. Russell?
During a Grade 8 bus trip, my malevolent math teacher ordered the driver to pull over when a group of obnoxious students refused to take their seats and taught them a valuable life lesson by kicking them off in the middle of nowhere.
Was he fired? Are you kidding? He probably got a teaching citation.
And while I view this situation differently today as a parent of young children, at that time, on that bus, I knew those brats got what they deserved.
Bravo, Mr. Russell. So long, suckers.
Physically, the building looks the same: The semicircular typing lab where, every Tuesday and Thursday, I downed eight packs of SweeTarts while Mr. Rawlings droned on about the letter ‘Q’; the rustic music room that inspired strangled notes on my cello; the tunnel-like foyer, where I cowered during school dances, too socially inept to navigate the nuances of an Olivia Newton John shlock ballad.
So who turned up for this exercise in wish-fulfilment time travel?
• The popular kids, of course, bored with their lives as event planners and institutional bootlickers, eager to reassert their social dominance and turn the clock back, if only for a moment.
Having relinquished their power during the first Trudeau administration, they seem less standoffish than bittersweet.
• The obnoxious blowhards, uncomfortable in their adult skins, still trying to impress with pitiful attempts at bravado.
Hey, you idiots — your parents are in their 80s. Your hair is falling out. Time to grow up.
• The perennial victims, who spent the past 45 years dreaming of the day they would return to exact sweet revenge for the wrongs inflicted — the intemperate humiliations — seeking justice and redemption.
Good luck with that, I say, and clear a path to the buffet table.
And, finally, me, the human microbe — neither popular nor unpopular, like wallpaper — curious to see what became of the people who once formed the constellations of my life, to embrace the spectacle of buoyant 15-yearold world-beaters magically transformed, like me, into beleaguered 57-year-old greybeards.
All of which was a far cry from my last reunion.
When I returned to my Group of Seven high school for its 25th anniversary in 1995, I remember feeling choked up, like a part of my life spiked with resonant emotional power had been casually reignited.
But I was single then, unhappy at work, grasping for connection.
A quarter century later I’m married with two young sons who regard me fondly as joker-inchief. I’m content.
And yet there’s that lure, that push to go back and re-examine the past, to figure out how “that” led to “this,” how a tiny DNA pool of “Bergs” and “Steins” and “Shapiros” created a unique being such as I.
Junior high, in the end, is a Rorschach inkblot for the rest of your life.
How you relate to your past dictates how you deal with the present and how happy you will be in future.
So when my high school turns 50 two years from now, I’ll be there again, watching the same cliques huddle together, still aloof, knowing that they, like me, are revisiting some pivotal part of themselves that got left behind.
In the spirit of communion, I’ll cast a friendly look, curious if the old hierarchy is still intact.
And when they cagily avert my gaze, I will sigh happily and head home, secure that the world in unfolding exactly as it should.