Out of the Mist

 

“Memories, they can’t be boughten.

They can’t be won at carnivals for free.

Well it took me years to get those souvenirs, 

And I don’t know how they slipped away from me.” 

John Prine

I have written about boys I looked up to; time to write about the girls.

I am certainly in good company when it comes to shortcomings in the memory department, thank you all so much. Fortunately for the exercise at hand, I am far more likely to conjure up memories from fifty-one years ago, than memories from last week.

Unfortunately, sometimes memories can be present, but certain individual elements remain lost in the cottage cheese depths of my brain. I offer that as a lame excuse for the tale I am about to tell but I have a method to my madness. I am hoping you can help me out, because there were a half-dozen of us in all, and I was the only boy.

Complete with white
shirt and tie...

I mentioned I did not participate in after-school anything past my freshman year; that is because I worked. My older brothers worked, we all “contributed” the bulk of our paychecks to the family and that’s just the way it was. From sophomore year onward, I never worked fewer than thirty hours a week at Sunrize Market, two blocks up from my house. It wasn’t bad and it wasn’t good; it just was.

Therefore, I struggled academically through my sophomore and junior years, due primarily to issues with math and science. By the time my senior year hit, I despaired of any kind of school success, thinking about physics and senior math, whatever that was. As a result, Mama once more donned her work gloves and marched off to have a discussion with school officials. After all, she had vested interest.

As amazing as it was to me, when Mama emerged from the meeting, I had bagged the only study hall period ever granted to the male species in Amat’s history. The other class I was assigned to was Business Law, offered in the 100 wing on the boys’ side of Amat, which explains why I have clear memories of boys, with whom I did not spend four years in my other classes.

Slowly the mist begins to clear.

My study hall was first period in the library, and to my surprise, I found that I was not to be alone: I had five classmates, all of them girls, all of them new acquaintances to me. Heavens to Murgatroid!

I have mentioned the invisible line across campus, the unbroken one which divided the boys from the girls, a tragedy of immeasurable proportions, as far as I am concerned. But I also mentioned there was bound to be some tunneling going on, and this is an example. I had been miraculously set down in the midst of five of these mythical/mysterious creatures, in direct defiance of that invisible line.

Oh, Happy Days!

I have mentioned to Denise, who chairs the reunion committee, that as I meander through Tusitala ’70, there are a dozen or so girls’ names that resonate with me, though I cannot explain why, at least not most of them.

Now, seven Amat girls ventured up to Plaskett Creek (Big Sur) to meet five of us boys, a few weeks after graduation, so there is that bit of confusion mixed in. I know who two of these girls are, but not the rest. They remain present in the mist, but unidentifiable. It baffles me because we spent an entire weekend together.

Mrs. Hagerty

Our study class met in the front of the library, to the right of Mrs. Hagerty’s desk, as she looked out into the room. This I remember: Mrs. Hagerty spent far more time looking at our table than she did looking out into the rest of the library.

I’m not saying it was party central, because it was a study hall. What I am saying is I felt as though I had fallen through some sort of portal, where all pretense of social status was checked at the door. In no other high school educational setting I had ever been a part of, had I felt more like an equal.

This was no lost puppy being taken in and pampered. I was simply a classmate there to try and do some of the work that I couldn’t do at home, and was treated accordingly. We all worked diligently and I’m sure our industry was reflected in our grades.

Cough. Cough. Snort. Well, at least the part about the lost puppy. And. well, the part about the industry, and sadly, probably the part about the grades too. As though six seniors of either gender, at any point in history, could keep the academic pedal to the metal in a study hall. 

To complete the picture, as an employee of Sunrize Market, where I was required to wear a white shirt and tie, I came into contact with lots of girls. By the time senior year rolled around, I was past the box boy phase and into working the cash register. Additionally, I was assigned my own section of the store to stock and order for, so I was what might be termed, a person of interest, when mom sent girls to the store for that night’s dinner ingredients.

Could this have been the pickup truck
I rode in? 

I brought this confidence to the table when I first made the scene in the library. I started out as a curiosity to the girls, and just simply became a classmate. I reveled in this program of beginning every school day in this manner, a free period with five girls who accepted me into their midst. 

They could have simply ignored me, preferring the hour be spent within their circle, but they did not. Of all my senior moments (pun intended) one that stands out most startling is riding in the pep parade in the back of a pickup, prior to either the first football game of the season or the fact that it was against La Puente High, which was local. 

In what universe did I belong in this parade? No sports, no pep club, no student government, no popular status to be found under any microscope, and yet there I was. I remember riding past La Puente High, with their students out front and everyone was just doing the school spirit thing. 

Whoever these girls were I was consorting with in the library, they were obviously not of my social strata, nor I of theirs. And yet, here I was riding in this truck, for all the universe as though I belonged.

No, I can’t remember who the girls were specifically, but I have a list with twelve names on it, and if someone from that group identifies herself, I bet I will find out that all five names are on my list. 

If not, it can go on being my own little dream. It beats the hell out of any other dreams from high school I have ever had, most involving my locker and the lost/forgotten combo syndrome.