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Hey, Marilyn! Mar'! Great to see you!
Roger! Rog! Ro-szhay! How are you? Isn't this a wonderful setting for our class reunion?
You know it, as we used to say in 1957. I love being back in the old gym. It was always a dank dungeon with a reek of sweat and too much reverb off the cement walls, but we had a lot of fun at the basketball games here. In my mind's ear I'm hearing the pep band play "Muskrat Ramble" and "Tiger Rag," and in my mind's eye I'm watching Sue Madden, Sandra Lambe, Dorothy Tucker, Suzanne Fredericksen, and Mary-Jo Hanley lead us in yelling "Rah, Rah for Edmonds" and do cartwheels and splits while Brian Bailey slashes to the hoop for a layup, Dick Curry cans a two-hand set, Jerry Hillis banks in a hook shot, Del Starkenberg makes a steal, Dick Eades snares a rebound, Tom Kjolso skies to win a jump ball, and Bruce Evans throws another pass out of bounds. With that lineup, I can't believe we lost 12 games and won only 8.
Me neither. I thought we'd only win 6! Anyway, here we are, 55 years after our high school graduation--did you ever think we'd survive to attend this reunion?
I never thought I would. I can't believe that I made it, as ignorant and innocent as I've always been. I was just a guy living on a chicken ranch in Alderwood Manor.
And I was just a gal from a little waterfront mill town that time forgot.
Mar', I was not one of the Top 10 students in our class, you know. I'm not the brightest compact fluorescent bulb in the room. I'm just a kilobyte guy in a world full of gigabyte people.
Same here. My throughput never seems to put through. I guess neither of us had the RAM we needed to rank among the class brains.
No way. Remember when we sat in the back of Steberl's geometry class, lost in a Puget Sound fog? I could not cope with all those damn theorems. What was that about a hypotenuse and a right triangle? What was the square of the hypotenuse?
I haven't the foggiest. What was pi? Did it have anything to do with Pythagoras? And why couldn't we square a circle? Or was it circle a square?
Beats me. Anyway, it was axiomatic that I would get a D in that class. And a corollary to that was that I would get a similar low grade in Algebra 3 and 4.
I know. The other students all seemed to do so much better than I. Their equations were quadratic, mine were just erratic. I kept my difficulties to myself, though, and I never got called on because Plesha never paid any attention to the dumb kids. I don't think he even knew I was there.
So how'd you do in Alberta Love's Creative Writing class?
Rotten. I could never think of anything to write. Fortunately, my parents subscribed to The Reader's Digest and I was able to snow Alberta a little bit by turning in passages I'd copied from the section called "Toward More Picturesque Speech."
I had other classroom troubles, also. In Cunningham's Cultural Heritage class, I was an embarrassment to my culture and my heritage. One day he wrote on the board a test question about the "incest taboo" which I misread as the "nicest taboo," which of course makes no sense, and I made up an absurd answer that amused him just enough to get me a D.
Hey, "incest" and "nicest"--that's an example of...what's that word, Ro-szhay?
I don't know. What do you think I am--a thesaurus?
Dyslexic! That's the word. You were dyslexic before dyslexia became known as a reading disability! You were a pioneer!
Maybe so. Maybe that explains why I struggled so much. Anyway, the crowning blow came when I took Family Living from Joyce Hamilton and she said she pitied my family and doubted I'd ever make a living. To tell you the truth, I can understand why she said it. I mean, what did I know? Back when I was in school, I gorged on Twinkies and Sweetie Pies. That was my brain food. I knew nothing about transfats.
I was just as ignorant as you. I slathered cocoa butter all over my body and spent hours on summer days working on my tan without even thinking about future wrinkles and melanomas.
I put heat on my sprains instead of icing them.
I put butter on my burns instead of icing them.
Who knew about the value of cardio-vascular exercise? I thought that running up stairs would give me a heart attack.
I thought that riding a bike was for kids.
My idea of a workout was to use Charles Atlas' "dynamic tension" exercises.
I didn't know the difference between autistic and artistic.
I thought that kids who didn't pay attention in class were just goof-offs, not suffering from--hey, is that Sally Smith over there?
Yes, it is. And did you mean to say "attention-deficit disorder?"
What? Oh--yes, I did.
I took Latin because I believed it would discipline my mind. And I took Home Ec just because I was a girl.
I took Wood Shop just because I was a guy.
I thought that females were the weaker sex and that only men were fit for military duty.
Me too! I believed in chivalry--walked on the street side when escorting a female, held a door for her, stood up when she entered a room, helped her get seated at a restaurant.
I thought that I would always wear dresses or skirts to school or work or church.
I thought that the only reason girls went to college was to find a husband and that if they ever did have to go to work they would be teachers, nurses, secretaries, or librarians.
I thought it was a fact that Columbus "discovered" America and that the "Indians" who occupied the land were "savages."
I thought that we would always agree that dropping the atomic bomb was the best way to end the war with Japan.
I thought that Pluto was a planet.
I thought that continents were motionless.
I thought that when writing I would always use an ink bottle and a Schaefer fountain pen.
I thought that the Polaroid camera and EZerase typing paper would be regarded as high-tech items forever.
I assumed that the role of teachers and coaches would always be to serve as their students' mentors, not as their sexual partners.
I had no idea that Sputnik would make possible cell phones and satellite TV.
I thought that wherever I lived in the future, my house would have only one phone and that it would hang on the wall.
I thought I'd always have a black and white TV with just 3 network channels to watch and an antenna of some sort to continually adjust, and I thought that I would always have to get up to change the channel.
I washed my hair only once a week. I thought I'd always be plagued by dandruff.
I thought that the brain was one big lump and you were either smart or you weren't. I didn't know anything about learning styles or the differences between left brain and right brain. I only knew that I was a lame brain.
I thought that we would always signal turns when driving our cars by rolling down the window by hand and motioning with our arms.
I thought that my teeth were perfectly fine as long as they didn't ache and they enabled me to chew my food. I didn't realize that they needed to be whitened and straightened.
I thought that my dentist would always stick his hand into my mouth without wearing gloves.
I thought that Seattle would never have a major league baseball team.
Yeah, about that--I'm still not sure that we do! Oh, Ro-szhay, how simple-minded we were as high school kids. But I have to admit that it didn't get any better for me when I entered adulthood. I mean, I believed that Winston tasted good, like a cigarette should.
I walked a mile for a Camel.
I smoked in the car when my kids were passengers.
I drank beer while I drove.
I drank when I was pregnant.
I put my kids to sleep on their stomachs.
I put mine to sleep in a dropside crib.
I let my kids play inside dry-cleaning bags.
I thought that child-proofing a house meant keeping all of my prized possessions out of their reach.
I painted my house with lead-based paints.
I poured my leftover paint down the drain.
I burned the trash in a large barrel in my backyard.
I thought the balance of world power would always need to be maintained by the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction.
I thought there'd always be an Iron Curtain--unless, of course, we had a nuclear war with the Soviets.
I thought our foreign policy would always be based on the "domino theory."
I had no idea that a future President would develop a taste for "regime change."
I thought that Germany would always be two countries with a wall dividing East and West Berlin.
I thought that China would always be closed to western countries.
I thought that western European countries would always be autonomous.
I thought that Fidel Castro would go to his grave saying that communism was superior to capitalism.
I thought that militants would always try to preserve their own lives when attacking their enemies, not blow themselves up with bombs strapped to their chests.
I thought that people who had jobs unrelated to national security would just show up to work, not go through metal detectors and be subject to fingerprinting and retinal scans.
I thought I would always have to stop and ask a gas station attendant for directions, not use a GPS in my car.
I thought that I would always have to stop and use a pay phone to convey a message, not use a Bluetooth in my car.
I thought that things like robots and cloning and genetic engineering would exist only in science fiction.
I had no concept of financial leverage. I invested in savings bonds.
I joined the Christmas Club!
I thought that owning a house would always be considered a good investment.
I thought that pension systems would always be well-funded.
I thought that my 401K was bullet-proof insurance for my old age.
I thought that what was good for General Motors was good for the country. Who knew that GM would need a bailout and that I would need stimulus money?
I thought that there would always be plenty of oil in the ground and none on the surface of the water in the Gulf of Mexico.
I had no concept of a carbon footprint.
I thought that, if anything, we were probably headed for another ice-age, not a global-warming meltdown.
I thought a "sound bite" was a mouthful of healthy food.
I thought a Tea Party was something EHS girls held for their mothers at school every spring.
Plasma to me meant the liquid part of the blood, not a type of TV set.
I thought that coffee was coffee, that it came in a Folger's or Maxwell House can, was served in a six-ounce crockery cup, and that you drank it either black or with cream and sugar. Who imagined espressos, multi-syruped lattes and mochas or cappu-frappuccinos served in short, tall, grande, and venti sizes?
I thought that a single career would last my entire working life.
I thought that I'd only get married once.
I thought that a family would always consist of one man and one woman and most likely one or more children.
I thought that same-sex relationships would always have to be clandestine.
I thought that men and women would always have to be satisfied with the unenhanced body parts that nature gave them.
I thought that an organ transplant meant moving a Hammond from one location to another.
I thought that when a woman talked about freezing her eggs, she meant that she had turned her refrigerator's thermostat down too low.
I thought that when a man said his sperm was frozen, he was just complaining about being cold.
I thought a woman would always have to carry her fetus in her own womb, not use a surrogate mother.
I thought a woman would always have to carry a fetus to term, not abort it.
I thought that, as parents and grandparents aged, their kids would take them in--not vice versa.
I thought that when you told your grandkids they could go play they would run outside, not huddle on the couch with a Play Station.
I thought that when you took your grandkids to get school supplies they would need PeeChees and 3-ring binders, not laptops and Kindles.
It never occurred to me that my grandkids would get cell phones so they could call 911 in case somebody started shooting at them in school.
I thought that teenage boys would always try to sneak a peak at a Playboy foldout. Who knew they'd be able to find all the hard-core porn they want on the Internet?
Yeah, go figure. But you know what? Even though we have been dubbed the Silent Generation (whereas our parents get to be called the Greatest Generation, with all that they did to get out of a depression and win a world war without whining, and the generation following us gets to be called the Baby Boomers and receive applause for stirring things up in the '60s), I think we may modestly give ourselves credit for living a good life by adapting to and surviving the many unexpected changes that have taken place since we left our old Art Deco alma mater. We, who are now pretty much the nation's elders, may not be venerated, as we would be in a Confucian world, but we've coped with a confusing world with a fair amount of aplomb. We've maintained many stabilizing traditions while yet accepting numerous social and technological developments. We paid our own way, we contributed our labor toward the betterment of society, we raised families, we practiced good citizenship, and now here we are in our 70s, still seeking enjoyment and fulfillment from life.
Yeah, look at me, with my 5-way bypass and my pacemaker, sipping cappuccinos or micro-brewed beer and streaming movies from Netflix to my big plasma HD TV screen with my hearing aid turned up so I can fully appreciate my "surround sound."
And look at me, swinging along fine with my hip replacement and my implants.
You mean those are, um....?
I was referring to dental implants.
Right! And they look great!
Yes, they do. And you know what else? I'm keeping in close touch with my family and my friends. I'm Twittering and texting and Skypeing. I'm on Facebook. I see the world. I go on cruises. I give back by volunteering at Stevens Hospital.
And I go hiking to stay physically fit and do crosswords and Sudoku to stay mentally alert. I do a little blogging. And you know what other project I'm working on? I've formed a chat group online, and with the help of some aging lawyers who are working pro bono, we're going to lobby all Medicare Advantage health plans to start including free Viagra in their prescription drug benefits.
Oh, Ro-szhay, who says we're the Silent Generation? It's people like you that make the world a better place. Keep up the good work, old Tiger, and I'll see you at our 60th!
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