my high school glory days.

My friend Amy goes to high school every day. She has to, because she teaches there. I don't know how she does it. I remember high school, and it was fine while I was there, but as soon as I graduated, I shook high school off of myself like a dog shakes water. I was done with that. I've been back to my alma mater once in the five years since I graduated, and that was four years ago. But I found myself back there one recent Friday night at a fundraiser dinner with my parents.

The fundraiser was put on by the athletic boosters club, a group basically consisting of the parents of student-athletes and possibly some bored former students who still find themselves living in the area. My parents are not in the athletic boosters, nor were they ever, not even when I was a student-athlete. But they like a nice tax writeoff every now and again, so they attend these dinners. I called at the last minute and said I was going to be in town the night they were going, and so I got roped in, too. Free low-grade steak? Okay, but only if it comes with a baked potato.

I am always afraid of running into people who knew me when. I'm not sure why. It's not as if I have anything to be ashamed of in terms of my status in life. Graduated from college early, steady job in an industry known for paying well, living in the comparatively big city, unmarried, but seriously involved. I think I just hate having to reduce the past five years of my life to a couple of sentences for someone who, truthfully, does not care. What I do now and where I live and my marital status do not define me, thanks for asking. But what can I say? I ask the same questions of these people, and maybe they hate giving me their answers, too.

Anyway.

Since this was an athletic boosters event, most of the school staff in attendence were coaches. I was pretty involved in the athletic program, playing three years of varsity basketball and four years of varsity volleyball. These were the people I was dreading to see, these were the ones that I knew would want to make small talk with me. I took a deep breath and prepared myself.

No one recognized me.

I haven't changed that much. My hair is longer, and I wear glasses now, but other than that, I am the same exact person. I used to walk through these halls with the knowledge that everyone knew me. Not everyone liked me, but they knew who I was. I played varsity sports, I was the salutatorian, I was in half a dozen clubs, I was a news anchor on the morning announcements. My face was on the TV twice a week. I was important, darnit, and now you people don't even know who I am. You, the coach over there, you used to know my free throw average and my shoe size, and now you can't even put a name to my face. A couple of people looked at me and realized that they probably were supposed to know who I was, and some of them probably even narrowed it down to a couple of people based on the fact that they recognized my parents. No one called me by name.

I've gotten used to being anonymous in my post-graduation days, but I guess I still clung to the fact that there was a time when my name and face carried some clout, and now it seems as if that has been taken away, too. I didn't even consider high school to be that much of an important time in my life; I called them my high school glory days as a joke. Like I said, it was just this period of my life and then it was over and I was done with it. I remember high school as being kind of fickle, and well, I guess I was right.

That night, I also saw some former classmates of mine, a pair of brothers who were the basketball coach's sons and team stars. I was well-known, but they were popular. Everyone wanted to be their friends, and the girls all had crushes on them. Sure, some of the nerdy kids who didn't understand about what was cool wanted to be my friend, but they were the minority. Nah, everyone, and I mean everyone, liked these guys. Even cynical as I was, I remember being delighted when one of them laughed at my joke once, though I had the sense not to show my pride. I didn't talk to the guys at the dinner, partly because I was afraid of them, still the popular kids in my mind, not recognizing me. Despite my vestigial feelings of awe, I realized that they are not important anymore either. Realizing their similar situation admittedly made me feel better about myself. Oh, how the mighty have fallen, I thought, not caring that some probably would have counted me among the fallen mighty.

I suppose that is the nature of high school. It has to be in a place where the cast of characters changes every year. Some other kid is playing my role there now, and everyone thinks that kid is important somehow in the grand scheme of things, not knowing about how I used to matter and then faded away. I mean, I was only following whoever it was before me, and maybe our names are all on some school plaque somewhere in the basement, but we're all just names. Since my high school doesn't matter all that much to me anymore, I suppose it's only fitting that the people there aren't overly concerned about me either.

It's sort of a relief, actually, that high school doesn't matter. We all get another chance to be important, whatever that even means, and though I did well in high school, I would not want my life to be judged based on what I was then. I was just like everybody else: a stupid kid. And though I don't always agree with how people are ranked out in the real world, I have to admit, it's better than it was in high school.

But I admit it, my pride was wounded, which is probably healthy, considering my over-healthy ego. I thought I'd said goodbye to my high school glory days five years ago, when in fact, I didn't really let them go until an athletic booster dinner a couple of weeks ago. And you know what? I'll probably still cling a little to them. Because along with all those other kids thinking I was important, I sure thought I was, too. I was mighty in my own mind, and oh, how I have fallen.