Growing old and glancing back
Aging has a way of blurring memories. All it takes is something to trigger them.
“It’s hard to believe we were that young.”
This telling line was written by a middle-aged female friend on her Facebook page, along with a photo of her with her husband on their honeymoon in 1996.
“Seems like 200 years ago,” she joked.
I feel the same away about my own life 25 years ago. Or even 10 years ago. At times it feels like a different lifetime altogether, as if I was entirely someone else. Aging has a way of creeping up on you like a shadowy ninja, until you wake up one morning and glance into the mirror of disbelief.
“Who is that person?” you ask yourself, staring into the same eyes that once looked back at you as a teenager.
What would the teenage version of yourself tell you at that middle-aged moment? In many ways, that teenager is long gone, a victim of life’s inevitable circumstances. In other ways, that teenager is still inside you, waiting to cause mischief or giggle or wonder again about the world. We outgrow our adolescence. We don’t have to outlive it.
I witnessed this experience last week at Andrean High School in Merrillville. After school let out for students that day, the empty building housed only memories from 35 years ago for Stacy Benka Siegmund, a 1988 graduate. She drove from her Wisconsin home to visit her 59er alma mater for the first time in three decades – to surprise her best friend on her 50th birthday.
Siegmund hid like a young girl in the school’s office as her old friend strolled through the door thinking she was there to pick up a birthday gift from Kathy Yurechko, a longtime faculty member. Siegmund’s close friend from high school initially didn’t recognize her be
hind a black facial mask and dark sunglasses.
“Stacy?” her friend asked.
Siegmund giggled before removing her sunglasses to reveal the surprise. Her friend and fellow 1988 Andrean grad, Karen Walker, jumped back and screamed when she realized Siegmund’s identity. Within seconds, they began acting as if they were high school students again.
They hugged. They laughed. They bolted down the hallway to find their lockers. I shadowed them to record a video of their special homecoming as a birthday gift to Walker, who’s my fiancé.
“Our lockers were around this corner,” Siegmund told Walker as they turned down one hallway. “This place has a lot of lockers. Oh, this is still intimidating.”
The two women began reliving how they first met, in a freshman English class, and which classes they shared throughout their high school years.
“I dream about this place,” Siegmund said, echoing what countless other people have said about their high school daze.
Outside the cafeteria, Siegmund recalled once smacking Walker with her
lunch bag at the same spot in a hallway.
“It was right here. I had a brown bag lunch with a yogurt and spoon in it,” Siegmund said, as if she packed it that morning, not 32 years earlier.
They pointed to where they used to sit inside the cafeteria, near the windows. And what they ate for lunch on certain days. Everything came rushing back. The memories. The feelings. The sheer excitement that felt like sheer boredom when they were teenagers.
Most of their sentences began with, “Remember when we…?”
Most of us would ask the same question if placed in a similar situation, regardless where or when we went to high school. We first attend to learn. We return to remember. It’s a lesson plan that eventually teaches us the real meaning of relativity.
“Wasn’t that the physics classroom?” Siegmund asked, pointing to an upstairs room.
“I would never know,” Walker replied.
They laughed and strolled away with their mutual memories.
Outside the school, they both recalled the same vehicle incident in the rear parking lot. Siegmund was the driver.
Walked was the passenger. Both of them couldn’t stop jabbering one day after school let out.
“We were a couple of goofy goobers,” Walker recalled.
That day, Siegmund wrongly put her car into reverse and hit the gas pedal – bam – hitting the car behind hers.
“And you know what we did?” Walker asked.
“We got the hell out of there!” Siegmund replied with a mischievous snicker.
Aging has a way of making certain memories so blurry while keeping certain ones so clear, so vivid. All it takes is something to trigger them. This could come from a stroll down a high school hallway, which prompted Yurechko to remark, “It was fun to watch two 50-year-olds turn 16 again.”
Or it could be triggered from an old photograph taken on a honeymoon vacation a quarter century ago, like what happened with my female Facebook friend.
Eventually we get to a certain age in life when we pause, glance back in the proverbial mirror, and wonder to ourselves, “It’s hard to believe we were that young.”