Time Travel

It's odd how the most innocuous thing can transport you back to another time and in an instant -- and for just an instant -- you simultaneously are the person you were and the person you've become.

Years ago, out of sheer boredom, I registered with ClassMates.com. And now at least once a month I receive an e-mail urging me to upgrade my membership because people are just dying to get in touch with me. If ClassMate is to be believed, all 201 members of my graduating class are collectively pining away for lack of knowledge of my whereabouts and my well being.

There isn't enough alcohol in the world that would make me believe that. There isn't enough money in the world to get me to act like I believed that.

I went to several different high schools because my mother was something of a nomad. She also tended toward self destructive acts, which meant that when circumstances were overwhelming I was shipped off to live with my father and re-attend the same small-town high school, with the same small-town people. Because of all that moving, I was perennially the new kid, which fostered a constant state of social insecurity. That insecurity made me an easy mark for other kids dealing with their own insecurities, and the easiest way for them to feel better about themselves was to make someone else feel bad about himself. That was very easy to do to me and for many very entertaining because I would react.

Even at the time I was told by almost every adult I knew that I needed to develop some perspective and to learn to control my emotional reactions. I needed to grow up. All I can say is that I did that as quickly as I could.

Still, those little ClassMate e-mails can really take me back to that same angry, emotional teenager. I become reacquainted with that raging voice inside me that can do nothing but howl at the memories of high school and the people there. There are layers of anger, first that I was treated so badly, then that I allowed it, then that I never completely let that anger go, and so on. It's just a kaleidoscope of ugly emotions that are sparked by simply seeing certain names appear on my computer screen, names that I need never experience again.

The difference now, however is that I can turn them off. Because I changed school so much, I wrote a lot of letters to friends, and many wrote back. I still have most of those letters, as well as yearbooks and other memorabilia. The anger I'm describing is like that musty box of paper
that I can pull out, look at, and then pack back up. It's something I would never really miss if I got rid of it, but it feels sort of disrespectful to just pitch it.