Our Time

Something is stirring,
Shifting ground …
It’s just begun.
Edges are blurring
All around,
And yesterday is done. – Stephen Sondheim’s “Our Time” from Merrily We Roll Along

I’m driving our once-hip, now beater 1999 black Jetta down Larkin Street—the very hill I once sprinted up at age 5, hysterical because a red ant chased me home from Hoyt School. The Beastie Boys’ Fight For Your Right to Party blares from the 80’s station as I approach the maize and blue balloon bouquet, featuring a numeral 2 Mylar as well as a numeral 9. I no longer have peers turning “29 over again,” and I only use the word maize in one specific context. These balloons celebrate West High School’s class of 1992 and the Regent’s royal colors.

I turn down the volume as I pull into the parking lot, suddenly self-conscious of any trying-too-hard announcement of my arrival. The recent death of one Beastie Boy—Adam Yaunch–frames the mini-existential crisis I self-diagnose in my rapid pulse as I consider the impending This is Your Life episode. Or maybe that stirring, ground-shifting, and edge-blurring stems purely from nerves and a portal about to take me back to a world of pep auds (pep as in pep rally, aud as in auditorium), cafeteria cheese bagels, and West High Drama–both literal and metaphorical.

Twenty Years.

Before opening my car door, I pause to compose a couple tweets from the safety and comfort of my iPhone:

Today random West High Graduates gather around a keg at Hoyt Park to celebrate 20 years since gathering around a keg at Hoyt Park. #Madison

What a difference 20 years makes. Then we were trying to escape our parents. Now we are trying to escape our children. #highschoolreunion

I shared custody with different and opposing crowds in high school—a wholesome bunch of theater kids and alternately the drinker/partiers. As a relative square—let’s say a trapezoid–among the spinning tops of my faster friends, I fit in enough to blend in, but not enough to actually have fun. I approached keg parties at Hoyt park with my waist-long hair flipping swagger and an I totally can’t wait, either…Totally! mantra I almost believed. A tiny piece of me always held hope that this enchanted cement slab on this forbidden night might disprove the inevitable boredom–altering my desperate quest for true love with the introduction of a new mystery guy—perhaps a friend of a friend from another school? A new backward baseball cap among backward baseball caps? A Junior-Varsity on the prowl for a soprano with a conscience?  As the hours passed, I’d keep choosing the same wrong adventure: I’d sip the same plastic cup of Old Milwaukee as it grew warmer and even less tolerable, and try to converse with the other medium-desirables that hadn’t paired off and disappeared into the woods.  However, even the medium-desirables enjoyed a consolation prize; when the police inevitably broke up the party, avoiding arrest proved something to re-live at school, even if that bonding translated into a barely-perceptible nod from a quasi attractive upperclassman in typing class.

I make my way toward that park shelter, now for a family picnic segment of the reunion weekend. Surveying the lawn full of kids, it appears that for most attendees the word “party” now conjures up novelty pencil and crazy straw-filled goodie bags, over-sugared children and a 14 thank you card hangover, rather than making out and running from police. I feel grateful for my decision to fly solo rather than spend the event at the lower playground with my kids, head twisted longingly in the direction of the hugging, high-fiving, and brat eating.

A male I can’t identify puts on a suit of what can only be our school mascot, Reggie the Regent. Much like the CGI animation that bastardizes our generation’s beloved 1980s Saturday Morning Cartoon heroes, this new mascot bears no relation to the Velveteen Rabbit version that once Walked Like An Egyptian through our Senior Skits. His severe plastic face looks Extremely Made-over, his mane of spirals mimics Toddlers & Tiara’s hair. Perhaps we look a tad different to him, too.

I find my name tag—a button with my senior portrait. My cheeks look chubby and I appear to have lost one of my incisors, a ghastly discovery made upon seeing the photo enlarged in the yearbook, as opposed to the tiny proof sheet I had selected from. One of the first people I encounter is a woman I’ve known since our Randall Raccoon grade school days. She appears bright-eyed and confident. She’s 4 weeks out of treatment for highly aggressive breast cancer, and her smile looks like it exists solely for this moment. She responds in kind, relaying that she could give a shit about any of the stuff she used to worry about. More importantly, she shares a poignant memory of my defending her honor in the third grade when someone accused her of passing gas. Apparently my 9-year-old self proclaimed “when someone farts, it’s impossible to determine the source,” and Johnny Cochran very likely based his  “If the glove doesn’t fit you must acquit” OJ defense strategy on this very precedent. Very likely.

Hours later, I drink margaritas with my once squeaky-clean theater friends. Buckets of Lone Star beer bottles are arriving and disappearing but the laughter and affection remain as constant as the chip refills. Despite the incredible careers at the table I feel no competitive vibe– I just feel heart. In fact, I feel such fondness from and for nearly everyone I encounter during the weekend. Instead of the desperate-to-define ourselves twentysomethings we presented at our 10th, most people seem content to bask in the simple connection of our shared history–the warmth that comes from home and people who knew you when you didn’t know yourself.

The big reunion cocktail event takes place the following evening in a standard conference center ballroom, all-inclusive of Spotted Cow on tap, a memorabilia table, and a DJ spinning Bel Biv Divoe. 20 years ago the food would’ve been gone in the first 15 minutes by the fistfull (followed by a postparty Taco John’s Potato Ole nightcap), the girls would’ve ditched their heels in a big pile for filthy bare feet, and the guys would have ties around their sweaty foreheads, dress shirts unbuttoned past navels. Today the food is appropriately consumed on cocktail plates, save a couple of us diving for the tartlets before they wheeled the spread away at 10pm sharp. Shoes and shirts stay firmly in place. Instead of writhing bodies grinding on the dance floor, a lone beer-bellied man in suspenders—once a boy who spent his time hanging out at Starvin Marvin’s gas station—grooves unselfconsciously to Funky Cold Medina.

When I get home a verse from one of my favorite Stephen Sondheim songs catches my throat. 20 years ago we struggled to figure out who we were. 10 years ago we struggled to figure out what to make of our lives. At this reunion, the class of 1992 seems happy being what we can.

Years from now,
We’ll remember and we’ll come back,
Buy the rooftop and hang a plaque:
This is where we began,
Being what we can.