Glory Days

Lately I have been receiving e-mails from both Classmates.com and from the Alumni Society of my old high school, because 2006 marks the 20th anniversary of my graduation. (Twenty years! Like I don’t already feel old enough!) Basically these e-mails keep asking me if I want to organize a reunion, or get in touch with some “old friends” and help THEM organize a reunion. And how do I respond to these e-mails? Simple – I don’t. Delete, delete, delete. Now, before you get all horrified, it’s not that I wouldn’t actually GO to a reunion, because I would. I SO TOTALLY would. I went to my 10th reunion and actually had a pretty good time. But to ORGANIZE it? Hell, no! I wasn’t UN-popular in high school by any means, but I certainly wasn’t with the pep squad, either. I pretty much got along with everyone, and fit in with several different “groups.” I was an honors straight-A student (with the exception of a “Christian Lifestyles” class that I actually failed – go figure!) who got along with the brains, the burnouts, and the average janes… and liked it that way. The only people I really never meshed with were the jocks and the student council preppies. Nor did I care to, for that matter. Anyway.

The high school I went to was Resurrection High School in Chicago, a catholic all-girls high school. Yes, I know. Sounds verrrrry scarrrry, doesn’t it? But really, it had some pretty good points. And I did enjoy my time there – I’m not one of those “God I HATED high school and I would NEVER go back” people. Because I didn’t hate high school, and I’d definitely go back – I had fun. I just didn’t realize it at the time. At least, not usually. You know, the usual teenage angst crap. When I look back in my journals, they crack me up. I had no idea how good I had it back then! So yes, Res was an ok school. There were actually two other all-girls Catholic high schools in the area, but Res was the only one I had any desire to attend. Res was more of an “average jane” school, while the other two were more “uppercrust,” and hence more snobbish. The girls at Regina Dominican and Mother Guerin tagged us as “Ressie Lezzies,” but we ‘Resites’ were less cutesy and more to the point – we just called them “stuck-up bitches.”

Since there were no boys at our school, it took a lot less time to get ready in the morning. No one to impress, unless you were one of the vast numbers that had a thing for Mr. Mazzulla the Social Studies teacher. Which sooo wasn’t me – I mean, sure the guy was a cool teacher, but I didn’t think he was all that. After all, the guy had to be like thirty, at least – gross!! (Oh wow, like I am TOTALLY older than Mr. Mazzulla now!! Well, not in real-time, but in high school time, anyway…) You never had to worry about looking stupid in front of a guy you liked, because there weren’t any guys. You could talk about sex and periods and soap operas freely and without worry, and nobody cared about sports scores (except the jocks, of course). Study hall and lunch were always fun, and you could actually EAT at lunch and not worry about some guy thinking you were a pig.

One of the really neat things about going to an all-girls school was the end of the day. If you were one of the lucky girls who had a boyfriend, AND said boyfriend had a car, you had the opportunity to be the envy of your peers. Because every day near the end of final period you could see the line of cars outside by the curb. In fall and spring, if it was still warm out, some of the guys would be leaning (very cool-like) against their cars, defiantly smoking cigarettes while the nuns stared out the windows at them in contempt. (There were several attempts made by the nuns to stop this so-called “travesty,” but nonetheless it continued.) And if you were one of the lucky ones (sometimes even if you WEREN’T, in the hopes of snagging some guy’s eye who may be growing tired of his current girlfriend) you stopped in the bathroom before you left, rolled up the plaid uniform skirt so it was about 6” above your knees instead of 3” BELOW them, added more makeup than the nuns allowed, and finished off your can of Rave hairspray on your poofy hair. Then, and only then, would you strut outside to your waiting chariot.

Fun stuff.

A lot of people don’t understand how you actually meet guys when you go to an all-girls school, but let me tell you, it ain’t hard. There were several all-boys high schools in the area, and all the schools had dances that pretty much anyone was free to attend. Also, I happened to work across the street at the hospital, and there were several cute guys that worked there as well. And of course, if all else failed, there was the ever-popular “Harlem Cruise,” where you just piled in the car with your girlfriends and drove up and down Harlem Avenue, realllly slowly, trying to find a similar car full of guys. Believe me, we had NO TROUBLE at all finding guys!

But really, high school was all about friends. Once I decided in sophomore year that I wanted to meet more people and have more fun, I did just that. No, I wasn’t Ms. Popularity or anything, but I’d say I was kind of known… my yearbooks have a ton of autographs in them, but the only picture of me was in the obligatory student photo section. (Oh – except for senior year – there’s a picture of me hugging a friend at graduation!) And when I let a very curious Lexie look at my old yearbooks, she commented, “Mom? Why does almost everyone say you are crazy?” Hmmmm. I looked over her shoulder and said, “But look, honey, they said I was NICE, too! See? ‘You are crazy but NICE.’” (Funny thing is, those girls had NO IDEA just HOW crazy my life would turn out to be a few years down the road…) I do think about the friends I had in high school now and then, since the only one I really still keep in touch with is Julie. And I WOULD like to see everyone again, because even though you can never really go back, you can sure have fun talking about it.

But no way in hell am I organizing anything. I’m just saying.