Catching Up With The Past In The Present

OOF.  FORGIVE THIS POST.  MY BRAIN IS GONE.

(Who dat?!)

I was never a person who claimed high school was the best time of my life.  Sure, I enjoyed it while I was there – I danced every role I desired, I was successful(ish) in the bare-bones academics offered, and I was as popular as I could have hoped with my innate desire to be a loner; yet I still fled after three years to pursue a professional career as a dancer. 

There are moments when I reminisce about my group of high school friends and wish that I had kept in better touch with them in the five years since I graduated.  The conservatory setting I attended at NCSA is as close as I will ever get to a “traditional” school experience, and the people who populated the dorms and studios I inhabited every day will always be life-long friends…in a sense. 

With many friends from years passed, I often find that the menu of conversation serves nostalgia as a main course.  Problem is: nostalgia holds about as much nutritional value as whipped cream.  And while it may be delicious, it can't do a body good.  Yet so many current relationships are stuck in the past. 

When I entered into dinner tonight with two high school buddies, I tried not to let my excitement get the best of me.   I feared the conversation would be weighed down by stories of teenage sexual exploration, or the occasional bottle of alcohol that was smuggled into the dorms with as much secrecy as a plot to overturn the President; after all, the only thing that can make whipped cream better is the fruit of debauchery. 

The friendship between Garen, Reba and myself holds enough history to fill a whipped cream feast.  Yet tonight we looked more at the present and the future than at the past, which was as refreshing as industrial air-conditioning on this scorching day.

(Looking lovely on their way to the ballet.)

Even though Reba (of the Rachel Ray Show) and I live in the same city, we still had as much catching up to do as with Garen, a recently promoted soloist with San Francisco Ballet.  Over a delicious meal of Pig’s Ass (I kid you not) and macaroni and cheese, we shared stories of how much our lives have changed since we first bonded as teenagers in North Carolina.   Of course the conversation wandered to the incriminating story or two about our teenage selves, but as I looked in each of their eyes I realized we were enjoying each other in the present, not as a vessel for the past.

I will never understand those who refer to high school as the paramount moment in their lives.  For me it always signaled the beginning of bigger and better things to come.  Tonight, I got proof of that.

(Old roomies.  It is official...)

(I am a cockatoo.)

(This post was quite possibly the pedestrian parading as the profound...or maybe not.)

Comments

[kathy]

Great post. Just what I needed to read tonight. Thanks.

[Natalie D.]

I wish more of my HS friend encounters would go like that. If only...

[Larry]

Did you get the recipe for Pig's Ass?

[Nick]

Your hair is FIERCE! I'm scared it's going to reach across the country and ATTACK ME!

[jolene]

Congrats to Garen on his promotion! It's much deserved, and it'll be great to see him bigger roles next year.