I’m 64, and I was poking around in Classmates.com, exploring the people in my graduation class of '63. But we had moved to that suburb when I was 13, and I got curious about all the kids I knew through 7th grade . . . none of whom I ever saw after we had moved.
Only one of them had a photo. I remember “Suzie” as the most popular girl at school. She was petite, had a great smile, big eyes and great personality. And she had wonderful taste in clothing and hair style.
Well, that was then and this is now. The most accurate adjective I can use to describe Suzie would be “slovenly.” Her hair was a bizarre shade of blonde and looked like it hadn’t been washed in years. Her posture was awful, with a big belly and sagging boobs. She wore a ton of makeup, and it looked like it had been applied with a spatula. Her dress had a tear in it, and stains.
I can’t imagine what might have happened in her life to cause such a drastic change. I’m not exactly the best looking guy around, but I didn’t start out as good-looking as Suzie. I feel so sorry for her.
My dad went to his forty-fifth high school reunion a couple years back, and he was very excited to see all the folks from back then. We teased him quite a bit, because there’s one picture of him from high school with his then-girlfriend. For a certain dance, she had made a dress for herself, and had made him a matching shirt, and this is a picture of them in their matchy-matchy outfits. So cute, and so creepy all at once.
Anyway, when dad got back from the reunion, he had similar comments. Many girls like your Suzie, many of the cute/popular girls, had really gone to seed; the men (who were still alive) seemed to be in his opinion really really old. His takeaway was that he’s in pretty darn good shape for a guy in his sixties, and had really lucked out with mom, who, as he says, is still gorgeous today.
Another thing that really changes is our perception. Not to mention our memories of the past. They tend to take on a rose-colored hue. Oh, wasn’t everything grand back then? sigh
It works the other way too. The stocky, geeky, pimply kid with glasses (he used to wear one of those cloth belts embroidered with whales, so popular in the 80s) with whom I shared my first kiss at age 13 turned into a devastatingly handsome man.
I recently ran across an old high school friend of mine on the Internet. Note that for me, high school was 30 years ago.
During high school, he got into drugs in a big way. I think his last two years of high school were spent stoned somehow; I don’t recall him ever being clean during those years. He just didn’t care about what came next–college, university, a job–unless it somehow involved drugs. His grades suffered, his appearance got worse. I always wondered what happened to him.
I found out when I ran across his business’s web site. He’s an investment advisor now, owning his own business and quite successful apparently. He looks fit and healthy, and good in a suit and tie. How people can change!
I’m 42. I went to high school with some of my Facebook friends. I am *shocked *at how fat many of them are.
When I was a sophomore in HS I dated a cute, short, and ***very ***petite junior. She’s now a lesbian, appears to weigh 300 lbs, and raises goats in Tennessee.
Just so you know that hot babe that dissed you in the hall last week is going to end up a fat, lazy cow with a gazillion kids that thinks teabagging means protesting the gubmint nazi socialist pigs.
I have a similar story about a high school buddy of mine. He was the guitar player in our band. Was always partying and drinking and getting into trouble. Didn’t finish high school (though he later got his GED).
About 12 years ago he moved to Colorado Springs to start a roofing business. He now owns a 6000 square foot home with 4-car garage. In the garage are a Porsche, Hummer, and Aston Martin.
Oh yes. My first boyfriend (at age 10) was a skinny little dude who played the violin and whose mom and grandma chaperoned us on our first date. He was still skinny and little when I saw him at our 35th reunion, but he rode his Harley from Georgia to Iowa for the event. He was the last guy you’d ever think would end up as a biker.
On the other hand, a friend who was very hot as a teenager turned into a pale (think drained by a vampire pale) wrinkled skinny gray-haired woman who marveled at how old everyone else looked.
But most of my classmates have aged really well, the non-smokers and non-tanners especially. We’re all in our mid 60’s now, and when I saw some of them at a funeral awhile back, they could have passed for 50.
I just did my 30th :eek: reunion this January. I was fat in high school and am fat now, so not much changed [except I got thin and stayed thin until we moved up to Connecticut and my health tanked …] but I got loads of compliments because I do not look 48, as I was not of the whole bake in the sun until leather tanning culture, and I have not ruined my hair with chemical processing, nor killed my skin with slathering tons of make up on it, and I have not plastic surgeried myself into submission …
A picture of the (only) guy I dated in college showed up as a friend suggestion on Facebook. I don’t think I would have recognized him if I had not seen his name. Some people change a lot and some don’t.
My grandfather went from a vicious man that beat his children and cheated his oldest son in a land deal to a grumpy old man that had a cruel sense of humor who played a little too rough with his older grandchildren to a pleasant fun grandfather to his younger grandchildren (you can seriously see the divide between the older and younger cousins by shouting ‘bear trap!’ and see who flinches) to an amazingly sweet great grandfather that the children loved.
When he died last year there was a very strange vibe to how people felt about him. He has to be the biggest example of a person who changed drastically in his life and we all kinda looked at him in different ways.
There was a girl a couple of grades behind me in high school who was the shit in just about every way you could think of. No, really! I don’t usually say things like people are the shit, but this girl was and then some. Cute, sweet, hot and gorgeous all rolled into one and the object of lust on the part of every damn guy in the school (and many of the teachers too, no doubt) but nonetheless untouchable because she only dated college guys. There was no one in that school as good-looking as she was and it was a big school (1,600 kids). If you were talking to someone who couldn’t place her by name all you had to say was “You know, the best-looking girl in the whole damn school?” and they knew immediately who you were talking about.
Well, she showed up at her 30th reunion, still attractive but wearing an extremely short skirt and too much makeup and dancing in a ridiculously hyper way on the dance floor that unfortunately had everyone sniggering at her behind her back.
About four or five years later events unfolded to make it apparent that all had not gone well in her life. She had several grown kids who were all living hand-to-mouth existences in bad parts of town, was living with a good-looking guy 20 years younger than she was, had problems with alcohol, had filed bankruptcy over a small company she started that never took off, and listed total assets of around $150,000, including her house.
One day around that time she got into an argument with her boyfriend and took out a gun and shot him. The bullet hit him in the arm and he was able to flee to their next door neighbor’s house where they took him in and locked the door. She stood outside screaming for him to come back out, and when he didn’t she put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger, dying in her neighbor’s yard at the age of 53.
Man, I read some of these stories, and I think, “I’m screwed up, but not nearly as much as I could be…”
:: shudder ::
I remember even at my 10th highschool reunion, some of the women we thpught were totally hot in school had not aged well, in a ‘too much makeup’ kind of way, and some of the guys just looked old. Of course now, they’d look young. Spoons’ post made me realize that my thirtieth highschool reunion would be next year, 2011.
My mom always said that the girls who were gorgeous in junior high and high school had peaked too early. I certainly was much better looking in my late twenties and thirties than I was in high school.
It has been 33 years since I graduated high school, but I haven’t been to any of the reunions, so I don’t know what those assholes look like now.
I went to my 30th reunion last year, and it was shocking how those people aged :eek: - and here I hadn’t changed a bit! Everyone who looked at my name tag said the same thing: “Sali? Sali?? I remember your long blond hair!” Apparently I had been scuttling around the school like Cousin Itt all those years ago. … The girls who had been good looking in school held up pretty well over the years, they “married well” and could afford expensive clothes and botox. The slobby girls mostly stayed slobby, and put on weight.
If by some miracle my class has another reunion, it’ll be the 40th in 2012. I attended the 9th (class of '72 was a bit… odd) and never knew about any others till after the fact, even though we had a very unusual last name and my mom never left the general area where I grew up. I almost went to the combined 35/36th with the class of '73, but a family issue stopped that.
Not that I really care. There were over 800 in my graduating class. I’ve seen exactly 4 of them in the last 5 years. Honestly, I can’t think of any that I’m even curious about. I do wonder how many are still alive.
