If life is a race, then it comes to pass that sometimes we are reminded that we are not so far away from our starting point after all. You may be off the mark, but you've done a complete circle, and so if you look up you'll find that where you are may look pretty damn familiar.

Even if its scenery you never expected to see again.

I had a dream the other night about high school. Now, high school was not a fun time for me. I was the "other side of the tracks" chiquita that dwelt in the land of "dear God let me blend in to the walls so the beautiful people will leave me alone". I have no fond memories of high school, and when I graduated early it was with a sigh of relief and an enormous "Fuck You, Sweet Valley High!"

OK, it wasn't called Sweet Valley High. It was a high school in Texas that saw the heat rising off the tarmac, that saw football players get seperate tests and cheerleaders were the Queens of the World. It was a posh area filled with kids that had Porsches and pool parties, and if you were a kid like me, you just wanted to get through the day unnoticed. Unnoticed meant untroubled. Untroubled meant free to be a dork and no one called you on it.

And isn't being a teenager the very essence of being a dork?

When I registered at Classmates.com it was with a sense of duty, and when I look at it now, I don't even recognize most of the names. I was in a massive class of graduating seniors, and not a single one of them is a person that I kept up with. Only a few of them ring familiar as friends or potential friends. High school is a big black pit in my head, a place I don't need to revisit ever again.

So in my dream, I wondered what the hell happened to some of those people. Since I was an actress for many years, the crowd I hung with tended to be of the fucked up artsy crowd, all angst and issues and composed Oscar acceptance speeches delivered in front of a foggy bathroom mirror. We all lived in the land of our flamboyantly gay high school drama teacher, with a dash of regional theatre thrown in on the side and children's theatre to, you know, fill in our time. Since Google is the best thing since the black strappy shoe, I reached out and tried to see what had become of many of them.

Some of them had bit parts in films I have never heard of, and then disappeared around the late 90's. A few of them seem to have vanished off the face of the earth, but then if they looked for me or the children's TV series I was on, they wouldn't find me, either (thank you, peace and quiet of name change.)

And then there was one of them coming through the Google. She had done anime. Anime...and porn.

I clicked on one of the links and saw her in a Texas lake with two perky nipples breaking the surface of the water and I thought Dear God, I'm blind. The First Commandment is Thou Shalt Not Wear Leg Warmers, followed by the Second one Thou Shalt Not See Thy Fellow School Comrades Half Naked.

This was followed by the thought-if one was going to do porn, wouldn't you do it under a false name? Isn't that the point? I mean, if your last name is Jones, isn't part of the fun to then rename yourself to something like Raveena Le Tatas? Beaver von Muff? Candy Mc Hooch? That kind of thing?

Just a thought.

And then I found out she lives about 3 hours north of me in England. She's married and has a daughter. It appears that porn and Japanese cartoons are in her past. I've sent an email into the darkness to see how she's doing. We'll see if I hear back.

I figure that just because high school sucked doesn't mean I have to keep letting it suck.

So it is that I jogged back to the starting point of high school, only I no longer need to have it keep me in my place.

-H.

AFTERNOON UPDATE-just found out she and her English hubby have moved back to Texas.

I mean, come on people...if you had to choose between living in England or freaking the shit out of nosy high school alumni Googlers with your floating nipples in a porn movie, wouldn't that be an easy choice?

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 08:11 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
Post contains 790 words, total size 4 kb.

1 Anime and porn. In the same post. You are going to get some interesting search results for this one, my dear. ;-) I'm not sure if I agree with your second commandment though. There are quite a few of my old schoolmates who I'd quite like to see sans nickers.

Posted by: Jim at September 26, 2005 10:43 AM (oqu5j)

2 The first time I went to a high school reunion was our 20th. I was very anxious about how I would be received, as I too tried to blend into the walls in school. Imagine my surprise as I was greeted by nearly everyone as an old friend who had been sorely missed. It surprised the heck out of me; I thought no one would remember me at all. Perhaps you will be fondly remembered by your old classmate and realize at last that you probably never blended into the walls either - you just thought you did! BTW, Ihave now attended every reunion since then and I have loved every one of them and had a great time.

Posted by: kenju at September 26, 2005 11:49 AM (+AT7Y)

3 Good for you-time can heal some wounds. Maybe a friend from the past is just what you need, and if anything it will remind you of just how far you have come.

Posted by: Teresa at September 26, 2005 01:24 PM (zf0DB)

4 My 25th reunion is this coming weekend, so this is something that's been on my mind. I always feel bad for people who say they hated HS because I had such a blast. I wasn't a jock or part of the 'social' crowd, I was more of a theater geek than anything else. But for some reason the lines between the clicques were blurred at my HS, and all of us would show up at the same parties. So I'm looking forward to things.

Posted by: Easy at September 26, 2005 01:54 PM (Mdvmn)

5 Well, see, she's moving to Lake Charles, La., where there's nobody who knows her. In fact there's nobody there at all, so she will be safe from seeing her porn movies at a first-run movie house.

Posted by: Old Horsetail Snake at September 26, 2005 03:20 PM (acLa9)

6 I sometimes wonder about the fate of my high school classmates, but not enough to actually go to a reunion. Like you, I did not enjoy high school.

Posted by: Marie at September 26, 2005 03:38 PM (PQxWr)

7 I attended three high schools...angst-ridden in each of them. I registered with classmates.com, but that was the extent of it. I was a dork then. I am a dork now, yet slightly more refined. Hey, the dork thing works for me... But unlike you, I am still trapped by the past. So hard to move on....

Posted by: Dana at September 26, 2005 06:48 PM (VQW8j)

8 you are EVIL!!! Afterall this is my 10 year reunion and gah you MADE me just spend 3 hours of my life on that classmates thing. I even ended up siging on to a stupid trial subscription so that I could "email" a few of the freaks! YOU

Posted by: stinkerbell at September 26, 2005 06:55 PM (ZznPv)

9 Once a dork, I'm still a dork. (sigh) Glad you aren't as well...!

Posted by: sue at September 26, 2005 06:58 PM (WbfZD)

10 I'm not sure if I qualified as a dork in high school. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure if I qualified for much of anything in high school. Like you, I have few fond memories of high school, other than it ending. Funny, I just got an invitation to my 20th reunion next summer. Other than a VERY small handful of close friends I still keep contact with, there is nobody I really want to see from my class. Of course, sometimes I'm tempted to see how many of them ended up going through rehab...

Posted by: diamond dave at September 26, 2005 09:38 PM (4J7so)

11 I just went to my 10th this summer, mostly to gloat, quite honestly, seeing as how I was the nerdy fat kid, and now I have a PhD and a husband.... But I didn't really. Everyone was so nice to each other, it was creepy. Of course, people gravitated to the same groups, and as in HS, no one danced, but it was pretty weird to see these people getting along.....

Posted by: caltechgirl at September 26, 2005 11:11 PM (jWrA1)

12 Any chance you can send me that site address...just for research of course. I want to see if I also am revolted by the site of perky breasts.

Posted by: Simon at September 27, 2005 08:02 AM (UKqGy)

13 Only went to one HS reunion, and it was ok. But just that. Promises were made to keep track of each other and nothing happened. I went to 4 schools, and only keep track of about 1 or 2 persons. Since I had trouble fitting in, I´m not surprised. But there is an exception. The last school I attended, just to take a couple of classes, gave me friends I keep to this day. Oh and that is probably a felony, "google stalking" ;-).

Posted by: Miguel at September 27, 2005 09:58 AM (RCbs5)

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