In September of 1960, I began the first grade at the parochial school where I’d spend the next 8 years. During that first year, I became aware of J – I can’t recall if we ever had the same teachers, but I knew who she was.
Fast forward to 7th grade. We were “Junior High Girls” and as such, we no longer had to wear the dorky navy-blue jumpers and blue bow ties. As the mature members of the school body, our uniform was a navy blue A-line skirt, a white blouse, and the same dorky brown oxfords or black-and-white saddle shoes. Still, the skirt marked us unmistakably. Seventh grade was the year I got a tape recorder. It was a portable reel-to-reel that used (if I remember correctly) 2¼ inch diameter tapes.
I used my babysitting money to buy some extra tapes, and I recorded my favorite albums so I could take my music wherever I went. See, children, this was before the days of cassette tapes or CDs or iPods or whatever other toys you have now. I took my tape recorder to school to play during recess, and all of us cool Junior High Girls would stand around the playground listening to the cool music. I was truly in the center of the cool crowd.
Then one day on the way home from school, I dropped my tape player and it broke. No more music at recess. No more crowd. Except for J – she still hung around with me. And that’s when I knew she really was my friend.
Along with the tape recorder, about this time I got my first guitar – it cost all of $8.88 at E. J. Korvettes. I got a book that told me how to tune it and how to finger chords, and I was soon playing and singing and dreaming of being a rock star. Meanwhile, I was old enough that my mom would let me go to J’s house, which was maybe a mile from my house, across at least one major road. This was about the time I met J’s next door neighbor D, who was our age, but she went to the public school.
It was now the summer of 1967. J, D, and I were going to be a rock band. We had our name all picked out: Uniquely Exclusive. We got D’s little sister F to take publicity photos of us. We talked about who we’d tour with. We wrote songs. I tried to teach J to play guitar, but she was left-handed, so it was tricky. D wasn’t too musical, but we figured she could play the tambourine.
Wasn’t that adorable? Needless to say, we didn’t become rock stars, but we did write a couple of pretty good ditties. We even sang them for J’s 9th grade music teacher, and he offered us some suggestions with a straight face. That’s the mark of a great teacher – not mocking a couple of semi-talented goofy little girls who had insanely huge dreams.
By 10th grade, we were all together in high school. D & I were in French class together. In fact, she was president of the French Club one year. The three of us hung out, had lunch together, and were pretty typical high school girls, except that D was the only one that dated. J & I never got asked out – I guess we weren’t pretty enough or something.
After graduation, D & I went to the same college. I honestly can’t remember where J went at that point. But college wasn’t for me, as I discovered within a month or so. I stuck it out till the end of the second semester, then joined then Navy. Instead of being friends, we became pen-pals who saw each other occasionally, and over the next 10 years, we pretty much lost touch.
In late 1981, all three of us showed up at our high school reunion. I didn’t recognize J at all, and by that time, D was married to a jerk who walked into the reunion with her, then turned around and walked out and went home. At least he had the decency to walk home and leave her the car…
After that reunion, life once again intruded, letters stopped, and except for the coffee mug D had given me for Christmas in 1973 (that mug is sitting on my desk at work at this very moment) they were both out of my life.
Enter the Internet and the phenomenon of Classmates.com. In the summer of ’01, D & I reconnected via email. We exchanged rare and sporadic messages over the next few years, but I was in FL and she was still in MD and that was pretty much that. Even after I moved back to MD in ’04, I didn’t really think about her much. Until a few weeks ago.
She sent me one of those silly survey emails that you’re supposed to fill out and forward on to your friends. I usually just delete those, but this time I read thru hers and thought about what my answers would be. Then, for some reason, I looked at the gazillion names to whom she had forwarded this, and I saw J’s email address. One thing led to another, and the three of us decided to meet for lunch. Which brings us to Feb 17.
I arrived at the Red Lobster where we were going to meet and, not seeing either of them in the lobby, I put my name on the list and sat down to wait. About 10 minutes later, D came walking thru the lobby enroute to the bathroom, and, like she’d said, except for the weight, she looked just the same. OK, maybe a few years older – criminy, we were still in our 20s last time we saw each other, and now we’re all in our 50s. She pointed me toward the booth where I saw J – a little grey in her hair, but I knew her instantly.
For the next 2 hours, we talked and talked and talked. I recognized mannerisms and facial expressions. I’d dug out and brought a couple of the “publicity photos” and found out that F had become quite the photographer in adulthood. J’s brother was married with a couple of kids. D’s parents had both died, and she still lived in her childhood home. J’s dad was dead, but her mother was still living in the house I remembered, talking about getting a motorcycle (she’s in her 80s!!!) and J is living in the house that her parents owned and rented out, back in the neighborhood where I grew up.
They told me about their doomed marriages and the men who have flitted in and out of their lives. I showed them pics of my sweetie and my baby and her fiancé. We talked about our cats and our dogs and our jobs and our insurance and our retirement plans and the fact that none of us got word about our 30th high school reunion in ’02. We talked about tracking down people we remembered and having our own reunion – maybe a picnic or a crab feast – no stuffy ballrooms and dressing up.
Our conversation moved out to the parking lot – shame on us for camping in the booth while the lobby filled. We discussed meeting somewhere halfway next time – maybe Annapolis. I invited them to come to the boonies, and we’ll probably plan to go boating when the weather gets nice.
I was really nervous as I headed to lunch – afraid that we’d sit there like lumps or that one would dominate the conversation or that it would be a horrid experience. But it was fun. We’re not the same people we were in high school by any means, but whatever we shared in the 60s, whatever connected us in high school, whatever friendship is, it’s still there. And it was really nice to find it again.
