a very good weekend and then.... some
such a great reunion weekend. Just enough libation that I was a chatterbox to all the classmates that showed up and their wives. I didn't' realize think that I was making much of a presence until 'Ra, Greg's wife and one of my best friends from HS and freshmen year college, wanted to go out front to smoke and dragged me along with her. In that 20 min time the official photographer decided to try to take our class reunion picture and all my classmates in attendance held up the shot for 15 minutes as they spread out trying to find me. Wives were staking out the mens room and guys were watching the buffet line (what can I say, they all know where I would likely be). They ended up taking a shot without me.
When I reappeared I wondered why so many of my classmates were waving at me from across the courtyard with some wry smiles on their faces. Everyone who saw me did that same thing. I was puzzled.
After learning what had happened I tracked down the photographer and reassembled everyone for another class picture, with me, smiling sheepishly, in the center of the entire group.
LOL. I felt the love and it was reminiscent of one of our prominent extemporaneous class pictures from our senior yearbook.
Then there was last night.....
Hormone and I had gone to the balloon glow, scoring a prime table in the direct center of everything. I made friends with many loiterers who sat around us though the people who were supposed to join us started out later and were not able to find parking and ended up going home without ever making to the field.
We got out in time to meet some of the guys for the pre-reunion barfest. Of the Palm Beach guys Paul was at home and Kev stayed up in Michigan but Tom was in from Atlanta. Then there was Sean.
Whew. The history. I'd seen him once or twice since college but we seemed to be in a place where we'd say hi and conveniently push aside everything High School between us. Our history was convoluted and torturous for the last three years of HS where we had intense feelings for each other, much of it acknowledged but rarely acted upon. We did some things together but he kept playing mind games. If I liked a girl he'd hook up with them before I did anything. I was fully aware of what he was doing and as soon as we graduated I recognized that the cessation of daily exposure to him would make it easy to wean myself off of the addiction to him. And I did.
Last night he seemed to be at a watershed point where he'd hit some kind of cathartic revelation. A couple of limes he pulled me aside to lay bare his soul. He was aware of all his douche-baggery treatment of me and why he did it. He knew exactly why I had to do what I did, especially because as always, at the time I explained what I was doing and why. But last night he owned up to it. How he'd felt and how he'd reacted badly. The intensity. The confusion. He brought up specifics and revealed that their impact upon him was exactly what I had intended at the time and he felt ashamed.
Oddly enough he was thanking me for it all. Through those years I'd showed him what a loving family was like - mutual love and respect between a child and parents and amongst all my siblings. A non-dysfunctional family was something he didn't have. He saw the way I handled things with family and friends and says that he has beaten himself up the past 20 years over how he handled things with me back then.
It was a trip, him going over all this stuff in public with all our friends just a foot behind me. Tom was sitting just behind where I was standing and even noted that he'd heard me say "I only had an impact on you for 4 years of the first half of our lives; that was over 20 years ago. We haven't seen each other for the second half. You can't have been that affected" to which Tom remarked "what the hell? He was just going off about High School stuff! " I remember all those years clearly (my damned precise memory) but sense it as an echo with none of the hormonal emotion from back then. I know what it was, how it felt and how it meant but IN THE PAST.... back then.
Even today Hormone texted me saying "W was being a real D-bad last night" to which I replied "just last night?" I remarked that I found it funny that so many people in HS thought he was cool because of his conquests and image, trying so hard to impress him to be their friend yet I was his friend and knew he had so many issues that I found it puzzling.
Unfortunately (for him) we kept getting interrupted by other guys coming up to talk to me and he never got to fully unload his baggage. I left before getting caught up in a 3 hour early morning chatfest with him thank god - he was at the point of asking who would be willing to be godfather to his soon to be delivered daughter and I was getting a bit uncomfortable feeling that the question was being directed to ME.
Oh, and he revealed that he checks out all my FB pictures- I have wall posts and comments blocked from all but friends but pictures are pretty open. I'm being stalked. seriously.
I don't know what he was trying to get at; it sort of seemed that he was saying our fates could have been much different had he been a the person I thought he could be or that our past had turned him into the husband and father that he is today (I didn't get the feeling that was the cornerstone of what he was saying). I kept telling him it was teenage angst and like everyone at that age, it helped us to learn and become who we are. He's got to absorb, integrate and release.
And I have GOT to make sure I know when he's going to be at our next class gathering because I need to be more prepared to counsel.
When I reappeared I wondered why so many of my classmates were waving at me from across the courtyard with some wry smiles on their faces. Everyone who saw me did that same thing. I was puzzled.
After learning what had happened I tracked down the photographer and reassembled everyone for another class picture, with me, smiling sheepishly, in the center of the entire group.
LOL. I felt the love and it was reminiscent of one of our prominent extemporaneous class pictures from our senior yearbook.
Then there was last night.....
Hormone and I had gone to the balloon glow, scoring a prime table in the direct center of everything. I made friends with many loiterers who sat around us though the people who were supposed to join us started out later and were not able to find parking and ended up going home without ever making to the field.
We got out in time to meet some of the guys for the pre-reunion barfest. Of the Palm Beach guys Paul was at home and Kev stayed up in Michigan but Tom was in from Atlanta. Then there was Sean.
Whew. The history. I'd seen him once or twice since college but we seemed to be in a place where we'd say hi and conveniently push aside everything High School between us. Our history was convoluted and torturous for the last three years of HS where we had intense feelings for each other, much of it acknowledged but rarely acted upon. We did some things together but he kept playing mind games. If I liked a girl he'd hook up with them before I did anything. I was fully aware of what he was doing and as soon as we graduated I recognized that the cessation of daily exposure to him would make it easy to wean myself off of the addiction to him. And I did.
Last night he seemed to be at a watershed point where he'd hit some kind of cathartic revelation. A couple of limes he pulled me aside to lay bare his soul. He was aware of all his douche-baggery treatment of me and why he did it. He knew exactly why I had to do what I did, especially because as always, at the time I explained what I was doing and why. But last night he owned up to it. How he'd felt and how he'd reacted badly. The intensity. The confusion. He brought up specifics and revealed that their impact upon him was exactly what I had intended at the time and he felt ashamed.
Oddly enough he was thanking me for it all. Through those years I'd showed him what a loving family was like - mutual love and respect between a child and parents and amongst all my siblings. A non-dysfunctional family was something he didn't have. He saw the way I handled things with family and friends and says that he has beaten himself up the past 20 years over how he handled things with me back then.
It was a trip, him going over all this stuff in public with all our friends just a foot behind me. Tom was sitting just behind where I was standing and even noted that he'd heard me say "I only had an impact on you for 4 years of the first half of our lives; that was over 20 years ago. We haven't seen each other for the second half. You can't have been that affected" to which Tom remarked "what the hell? He was just going off about High School stuff! " I remember all those years clearly (my damned precise memory) but sense it as an echo with none of the hormonal emotion from back then. I know what it was, how it felt and how it meant but IN THE PAST.... back then.
Even today Hormone texted me saying "W was being a real D-bad last night" to which I replied "just last night?" I remarked that I found it funny that so many people in HS thought he was cool because of his conquests and image, trying so hard to impress him to be their friend yet I was his friend and knew he had so many issues that I found it puzzling.
Unfortunately (for him) we kept getting interrupted by other guys coming up to talk to me and he never got to fully unload his baggage. I left before getting caught up in a 3 hour early morning chatfest with him thank god - he was at the point of asking who would be willing to be godfather to his soon to be delivered daughter and I was getting a bit uncomfortable feeling that the question was being directed to ME.
Oh, and he revealed that he checks out all my FB pictures- I have wall posts and comments blocked from all but friends but pictures are pretty open. I'm being stalked. seriously.
I don't know what he was trying to get at; it sort of seemed that he was saying our fates could have been much different had he been a the person I thought he could be or that our past had turned him into the husband and father that he is today (I didn't get the feeling that was the cornerstone of what he was saying). I kept telling him it was teenage angst and like everyone at that age, it helped us to learn and become who we are. He's got to absorb, integrate and release.
And I have GOT to make sure I know when he's going to be at our next class gathering because I need to be more prepared to counsel.