Wallowing in Nostalgia

My junior year of high school, some friends of mine were in a one-act called "Did You Ever Go to P.S. 43?" by Michael Schulman. In it, a woman sits on a park bench, minding her own business, when a man comes up and asks her whether she went to the school listed in the title. We soon learn that he was once a star athlete at that school who had one fantastic game, one perfect night, early on in his life--and that nothing was ever so good again. So he roams the city, asking random strangers whether maybe they were there, whether they can validate his life by remembering that one perfect night with him.

A group of people I went to high school with has slowly gathered on Facebook, over the past couple of months, and I have found myself nearly obsessed with the group. I started scanning old photos, even old programs, and of course started to actively seek out people I hadn't seen in something like a quarter of a century. A formal group got created on Facebook just for the performers at that school in certain years, which had the effect of creating an ongoing high-school reunion where only the people you liked showed up. (As opposed to the one actual reunion I attended, my tenth, where I ended up disappointed because most of the performers weren't there.)

No question, it's been great reconnecting with some people I hadn't seen in all that time; there are even a couple folks I really hadn't known that well back then, but who are now becoming actual friends, not just of the Facebook kind. The old artificial distinctions of age drop away (who cares now whether someone was a year ahead or behind?), and we can all just be people with a certain specific connection, sharing the old stories--indulging ourselves, as much as we want, in a bit of harmless nostalgia.

And as I wallow, my memory of those days has become golden. All the pictures in my head look something like this...

That's me looking goofy on the right, but smiling and cheerful, with old friends, some of whom are now members of that Facebook group. (And one of whom, Rudy Prieto, in the red shirt with his back to the camera, passed away years ago, alas.) But why shouldn't I be smiling? By my senior year, I was completely in command. I had leads in both the major shows, completely knocking it out of the park as Fagin in Oliver! The school created a closed-circuit TV system that year, so my best friend David Hernandez and I did the morning announcements as a pair of oddball TV anchors, playing as many pranks as we could possibly dream up--and since I was on TV every morning, absolutely everyone in school knew me, and said hi, and kinda sucked up in the way that only happens when you're on TV, even closed-circuit TV that never leaves that one building. Every morning I would get to school half an hour early, just so I could hang out near the Drama classroom with my friends before classes started. I was in Advanced Placement classes, got good grades, and didn't have to take math. What more could a fella want?

But here's the thing. A few days ago I wanted to look up some specific information that required pulling out the journals I started keeping my first year of high school. And there, in horrifically bad writing, was the truth of how I felt back then. Which is to say, miserable.

Every stupid little insult. Every moment at a party when I felt snubbed. Every unrequited crush. Every moment that didn't meet some unattainable standard of perfection, I dwelled on all of it, and refused to enjoy all the moments that were, in fact, pretty damn great. It was as if I were that guy in Schulman's play, who has in fact found people who remember his big game--but who has now discovered that even when he was having his great moment, he was completely unable to enjoy a second of it. Best moment of his life and all he did at the time was gripe.

(By the way--I am not that guy. Plenty of great moments since high school, thank you very much. Most recently, watching my name scroll across a movie screen for the first time, in a crowded theater, that was just plain fantastic. Plenty more of those moments to come, too--I feel like I'm only just beginning to peak, right now. So there.)

(And, of course, all of the above could also be summed up thusly: I was a teenager, and that's what we do. C'est la vie.)

Still, I can't escape the conclusion that the only reason I was miserable was because I wanted to be. And that if I'd been able to simply make the other decision, the Buddhist decision to simply be where I was and experience life as it was rather than as I desired it to be, I'd have had a hell of a lot more fun back then.

Of course it's all a vicious cycle: if I'd been able to enjoy myself a little more, doubtless there wouldn't have been quite so many stupid little insults, awkward moments at parties, or unrequited crushes. When I wrote Thereby, I discovered the one theme that has come to dominate all my work: that our lives are like stories, and we're the tellers of those stories. Whether they go well or badly is entirely up to us.

Now I learn that lesson again, through my own awful high-school journal entries. A perfectly lovely time made miserable by nothing more than my decision to be miserable. A story that could have gone so much better, if only I had allowed myself to tell it that way.