Psychoanalysis (aka totally solipsistic blog about me and more me (as opposed to blogs about me))

There comes a time in our lives when we are forced to confront painful episodes of our past. For a lot of people, this can mean the most tortuous of experiences: high school. The year of my 10 year reunion is nigh and while thinking of this fact, it’s hard to not stare at the ceiling and get lost in the most embarrassing episodes of my youth, but perhaps the most crucial as well. If I were not a complete dork in high school, would I still have blossomed into the amazing lily (pad) I am today?

Due to being reunited with a few former Falcons at my friend Aurelia’s wedding last fall, I have been sickly drawn into the kitschy idea of helping plan for the reunion. But I am unsure that I can pull it off without becoming infantilized by the whole process. Are we as humans destined to fill certain roles in certain peer groups that will in essence be frozen in history only to be melted by sadistic concepts such as “reunion”? Tonight was my opportunity to test this theory. I called a former classmate to brainstorm reunion ideas. It went like this:

Ring, Ring, ring, ring (answering machine picks up)
My internal dialogue:
“She did not answer...is it because I’m a dork?”

“Does she like me?”

“What am I doing?”

“Am I a dork for doing this?”

“I have nothing to wear.”
BEEP:

“Hi Sunny. It’s Lee. Sorry I didn’t return your call last night. I………..was busy. I just started going to this knitting group. And actually, tomorrow is my book club, so I’ll be busy tomorrow night. But I’m free on Friday night and all weekend. Why don’t you call and let me know a good time to call you. Or maybe you should just e-mail and we don’t have to talk. Or call. Whatever.”

Shaking with embarrassment I quickly hung up the phone. Not only did I ramble, but I intimated that my only time commitments involved knitting and reading and that I was free on the weekends? What is wrong with me?

Since only two of my blog readers actually experienced my teenage self, I thought I’d take the rest of you on a trip down memory lane to Lee Pruett street, circa 1991-1995:

1. I was new to Cactus Shadows high school. Ms. Katy Davidson was the first person to talk to me. My method for dealing with a new school: fly under the radar (also a popular reality show technique). My low flying tactics soon crash and burn when I wear a shirt backwards (with pocket in the back) to school and Chuck Browder points this fact out to my entire geometry class. Unfortunately, this wasn’t until fourth period, thereby allowing me three whole classes to show off my new fashion sensibilities.

2. I LOVED band. So much, in fact, that I decided I would like to participate in a drum corps the summer in between my freshman and sophomore years of school. What is drum corps? Well, check it out for yourself, but in a nutshell it is marching band as an unpaid, full-time summer job. I marched and I played the mellophone. The pretty girls where the ones who flipped flags around and wore heavy costume make-up during performances. For our “wacky” photo, I put my mellophone on my head. (maybe someday I will scan in the photo)

3. I followed my drum corps summer with two summers of actual band camp! It was really fun, except for the fact that my failed attempts at love with band nerds scared me away from boys for MANY years.

4. I LOVED orchestra. Not content to play solely in our shitty high school band, I was intensely involved with the Phoenix Youth Orchestra. Actually, it was really cool and was by audition, so it was the best kids in the Phoenix area. We played a concert with the Phoenix Symphony. All my cohorts went to Ivy League schools, so it was sort of like an overachiever’s club. Needless to say I was VERY popular at youth orchestra.

5. Katy D. and I entered a hacky-sack contest held at lunch time, but due to the combination of our lack of skillz and ability to find the loopholes in the contest rules, we decided to play “virtual hacky sack”. In front of our fellow lunchers, we proceeded to play without a sack and then make up the number of hits we got. I think we won, but then had an attack of the conscience and conceded the loss.

6. Rose B. and I wrestled on the grass during lunch. Literally...and in retrospect, quite embarrassingly.

7. I gave a book report on the seminal “aliens are with us” book, Communion: A true story by Whitley Strieber. Seriously.

8. I LOVED calculus.

9. I folded my socks down, rather than “scrunching”. You guys know what I’m talking about.

10. I wrote secret love poems to my science teacher.

11. My senior yearbook quote: The ribbon lightening stalks the pleomorphic leg stump.

I don’t think I need to say much more. To counter my social failings, my brother was a VERY popular student. He was athletic, funny and the student body president. Needless to say, our dynamic was not unlike that of similarly paired siblings in many a teen movie!

I have very few photos of that period of my life, so check me out at a gun course in March!:

Taking my accuracy test at the bear target:



The assortment of guns we fired: