From what I’ve been able to gather over the years, our class in high school was remarkably unique. Most high schools are very “cliquey.” You have the popular people and the druggo people and the geeks and the sports folks and they keep away from each other and hate each other.
Not in our class.
We had one of the most un-cliquey and unified classes I’ve ever heard of. We seemed to understand that each group had strengths and weaknesses and we organized and worked together to cause massive mayhem in our high school. We discovered early it was MUCH more fun to torture the teachers and administration as a unit than waste time screwing each other over. I am convinced that the teachers and administration had a huge party and celebrated when we graduated and they were able to get rid of us.
This meant that we had a lot of friends and connections and, years later, when we began having reunions, we all got together and had a great time. No cliques forming around the sides of the hall. Everyone just moving around and visiting and reliving great old stories. It went on for hours and everyone had a great time. It also means that we all have a lot of connections across a myriad of professions. Auto mechanics, teachers, lawyers, artists, doctors and other professionals all came out of our class and we all know each other. Good networking.
When our class was having elections for class officers, we had a friend who was pretty much just a rebel and we decided we wanted to make him President. Since our class was pretty wild, the idea of having this guy as President was pretty appealing and he had a wide support base. However, the Administration was completely against this idea. They wanted some “young republican” type to be the class President, not some freakin’ hippy with long hair. To just aggravate the administrators more, we started a button campaign with the slogan “Put Some Life Into This Joint.” The buttons had fake “joints” on them. With our unified class, EVERYONE helped make and distribute the buttons. This really enraged the administration. They didn’t think drugs were anything to joke about and hated the buttons. They accused us of poor taste. Ha … fooled them …. We didn’t have poor taste ….. we had no taste at all. To make sure we had the widest possible coverage, we deliberately started a rumor that every 100th joint was real. Well …… you couldn’t keep them on the shelves after that. The school was buried in the buttons and the administration was ticked off beyond words. The final blow was that our candidate won by a landslide. We heard that the administration had a special meeting and considered nullifying the election for a number of reasons but, in the end, they gritted their teeth and took it on the chin.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Sunday, December 16, 2007
The Quiet Sound of a Whistle, Far in the Distance
I plan on relating stories as they come to me, not in a chronological fashion. Live with it.
During this holiday season, I’d like to relate a little story. In high school, the “downstairs cellar gang” had a very strong feeling that Christmas had become way to commercial and greedy. We
felt that we needed to do something, as a group, to reject that commercialism and bring us back
to reality.
One Christmas Eve, we decided to take a night walk from our homes, to a state park about 25 miles away. The weather had been fairly bad for the week before, but, the evening that we
started the walk, it was cold, but clear with little wind and it was not snowing. We started in the evening and walked to the park. It was incredible.
When you drive a route, your mind sets up a timeline. This, then this in a minute, then this in
two minutes. Plus, because you are watching the road, you never look back and have a visual reference of what things look like behind you.
When we walked, we could see the distances between the intersections. We could look back to see where we’d been. Since it was Christmas Eve, the traffic was fairly light so most of the walk was quiet. The road to the park went mostly through country areas, not city, so it was dark and pleasant. You could hear trains and other sounds very far into the distance because of the quiet.
We went through one small town where the town center was a small park. The sidewalks around it were lined with the candles in paper bags (I forget the name for them) glowing in the silence. It was really very nice and very peaceful.
Yet, as a reminder of the intrusion of Man on the peace, at 2 am, when the bars closed, there was about 30 minutes of relatively high traffice flow as the drunks headed home. The activity surprised us, and, when we thought about what was causing the activity, it just made us sad.
When we got to the park, we spent a couple of hours hiking around and enjoying the peace far, far from the “commercial” world. Finally, at a pre-determined time, Joe’s brother Larry drove to the park to take us home. It took many quiet hours, full of surprises and new vistas to get to the park. It took less than a half-hour to zoom home back in the convieniences of modernality.
I will always remember that walk. It was a bold reminder of the peace and the lives that our ancestors would have had on this special day. It broke the modern mold of rushing, driving, and buying. It restored the soul. And I have thought of it every Christmas since, whenever the pace gets too quick and the demands a bit heavy. It always brings back to me the real reason for the season.
During this holiday season, I’d like to relate a little story. In high school, the “downstairs cellar gang” had a very strong feeling that Christmas had become way to commercial and greedy. We
felt that we needed to do something, as a group, to reject that commercialism and bring us back
to reality.
One Christmas Eve, we decided to take a night walk from our homes, to a state park about 25 miles away. The weather had been fairly bad for the week before, but, the evening that we
started the walk, it was cold, but clear with little wind and it was not snowing. We started in the evening and walked to the park. It was incredible.
When you drive a route, your mind sets up a timeline. This, then this in a minute, then this in
two minutes. Plus, because you are watching the road, you never look back and have a visual reference of what things look like behind you.
When we walked, we could see the distances between the intersections. We could look back to see where we’d been. Since it was Christmas Eve, the traffic was fairly light so most of the walk was quiet. The road to the park went mostly through country areas, not city, so it was dark and pleasant. You could hear trains and other sounds very far into the distance because of the quiet.
We went through one small town where the town center was a small park. The sidewalks around it were lined with the candles in paper bags (I forget the name for them) glowing in the silence. It was really very nice and very peaceful.
Yet, as a reminder of the intrusion of Man on the peace, at 2 am, when the bars closed, there was about 30 minutes of relatively high traffice flow as the drunks headed home. The activity surprised us, and, when we thought about what was causing the activity, it just made us sad.
When we got to the park, we spent a couple of hours hiking around and enjoying the peace far, far from the “commercial” world. Finally, at a pre-determined time, Joe’s brother Larry drove to the park to take us home. It took many quiet hours, full of surprises and new vistas to get to the park. It took less than a half-hour to zoom home back in the convieniences of modernality.
I will always remember that walk. It was a bold reminder of the peace and the lives that our ancestors would have had on this special day. It broke the modern mold of rushing, driving, and buying. It restored the soul. And I have thought of it every Christmas since, whenever the pace gets too quick and the demands a bit heavy. It always brings back to me the real reason for the season.
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