A few minutes ago I was reading old messages on a class reunion website, and feeling both sentimental and inspired from the experience. At 1 am, perusing a class reunion message board is both a connection and a lonely experience. "Respond to my email, ya grubby old bastard!" was a sure sign that somewhere, somebody loves me.
(Maudlin early morning moment is sponsored by...)
More recently -i.e., over the past year and a half- I discovered Facebook. Wonderful portal of communication. I'm a little sad that very few of my grade school cohort ever swing by the ol' Cave Spring High internet homestead anymore. It's like an old road that was abandoned when the new interstate came through (One empathizes with Myspace). The asphalt is already coming up in my messages on the website. And yes, that's metaphorical. At least, it better be, since I'm not in a macadam mood at the moment. If I were, you'd probably want to join me: "Go warm up the steamroller while I mix the tar, Jerry. We have a lot of conjunctions and adverbs to fix!" And off we'd go, you revving up the 'roller while I boiled tar and swore like road crew foremen are supposed to do. (Hey, it's my blog, so I get to be the foreman. Now pass me a doughnut, Dewey.)
I have a confession to make: Approximately five minutes have passed since I finished that last paragraph. I went into the kitchen for some toaster strudel and a little more Mountain Dew Throwback (MAN this stuff is good -gotcha!). When I repositioned myself on this luxurious microfiber manager's chair with the bolts that never seem quite tight enough, I decided to look over the paragraph abovev this one. Now, typically when I write something and read it right away, I feel stupid and embarrassed. "Good Lord", I fret. "Do I really want people to read this? What if they read it and think, 'gee, Rob must feel pretty stupid and embarrassed for writing that paragraph. Good thing he heated up some toaster strudel', and the next time I see them they're giving me sympathetic looks?
Forgive me. Sometimes I go off on tangents. Actually, I do more than that. I toss my gps out the window and explore those tangents. I remember, in some earlier blog, going so far on a tangent that I ended up in Dekorah, Iowa, much to the surprise of people who were merely getting around in minivans and pickup trucks. Imagine their surprise when I opened the tangent door and all those Mountain Dew bottles fell onto the ground! I have truly great memories of high school and many, many friends and acquaintances from those years. Some I've gotten to know since high school, and others from before the onset of driver's ed and lunch ladies who always seemed cloned somehow. What wonderful times! Bottle rockets with Bert. Ending up in a jail cell for eight hours with Bert. Spinning dad's car out at seventy miles per hour. Whoops. Discussions about life, religion, and whether Oldsmobiles or Chevies were better with Chuck. Laughing about something, nonstop, for forty-five minutes with Chuck. We were in severe pain for two days following that. Teaching my then-girlfriend (Betty L.) how to defend herself against a girl who was bullying her at her high school; by showing her very basic boxing (jab, cross, hook, and uppercut) moves, making her so excited and overconfident that she decked me right off of her porch while her dad laughed himself sick! Having a wonderfully terrible crush on a beautiful and sweet girl (fitting oxymoron). Sneaking dad's car out for a midnight cruise with a friend, only to be chased down by my mom over on Bower Road. Good teachers who had incredible patience with me ("Yes, Rob, it is your turn to read a passage from Beowulf, so stop trying to hide behind Debbie back there!"). Driving up and down Williamson Road. Going to parties, or at least telling folks I went to "a real blowout" Saturday night, lest someone discover I had been in the basement watching Carol Burnett. These don't begin to capture all the moments from my past that I love.
Erik Erikson was a stage theorist. (Boffo segue is sponsored by...) He posited that as we advance into successive stages of development across the life span (still with me?), how we enter those stages is determined largely by how well we resolved conflicts and other challenges of preceding stages. In the case of me and my classmates, these days we're negotiating our way through Erikson's seventh stage, which is "generativity versus stagnation". If we can successfully work our way through the spooky hedgerows of this stage, then we'll find ourselves becoming increasingly caring of others and productive. I see my family and friends as highly generative. I thoroughly enjoy their company, especially when Marsha accidentally pays for my lunch. (Great steak fajitas, by the way.) We've discovered that we enjoy one another's company and, despite the occasional minor social setback, good new days are being made.
Erikson would be proud that his theory is sound. I bet he drank Mountain Dew too.
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