Saturday July 9th, 2011 - Cary, IL Tonight was my high school reunion from Messmer High in Milwaukee, Class of 1981. Thirty years sure slid by quickly. Geez. Where did it go? If prison time blew by that fast, there’d be a lot more crime than there already is. 1981 sounds like such a long time ago. It was sometime after the Paleozoic era, but one year before the start of MTV. My class is THE official last generation of old farts, as we were the end of an era. After that, it’s all video games and technology and a whole new world exploded. Internet? Who knew of it? It truly was a different planet then, and somewhere I transformed from dork to dinosaur. What an unforgiving entity time is, and it truly waits for nobody. I have no idea where it went, but it’s gone for good. I was planning to attend, even though my whole high school experience wasn’t what I’d call stellar, but I wasn’t feeling physically up to it right now. Those years were frankly quite miserable, but it wasn’t a fault of my classmates. I didn’t blame them then and I don’t now. I was too busy trying to survive back then to enjoy any of the fun those years are supposed to be. For whatever reason, my life didn’t go like that. I know I’m not the only one who was a zero in high school, but it sure would have been fun to be in the mix of the action. I’d have loved to play sports and be in clubs and try my hand at performing in a play or something, but it just wasn’t in the cards. I was out on my own by junior year, and had to work crappy jobs at night to pay rent to keep myself afloat. Many times I thought about dropping out, but my grandfather made me promise I would finish and get my diploma. My father never did, and that really bothered him. He was sick by then, and I couldn’t let him down. I finished my classes a semester early, but graduated with the class in June. He’d already had cancer for a few years and died December 22nd. After that, life really fell apart. I was on my own, and my main mentor was gone. That’s a volatile time for a young man to not have a grounded foundation, and I can see why it’s so easy to make a major mistake and wind up in prison. I’m very lucky to have stayed out. Through the years, I’ve had many people from my class come to see me perform when I have been in town and to a person they’ve all been very complimentary and supportive of everything I’ve done from comedy to radio to appearing on TV. I appreciate it very much. I never thought they were bad people, I just didn’t end up getting to know the majority of them very well. As time has gone by, I’ve had positive interaction with a number of my classmates and that’s why I wanted to go tonight and just say hello and thank them again. What idiots we are during those years anyway. As a small child, high school kids seem SO sophisticated and grown up. Boy, is that a myth. Now we’ve all had life’s storms beat on us for thirty years and I’m sure we’re all a lot more grounded and real. Time does what it does, and this process happens over and over. I’m sorry I missed the chance to mingle.
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