Confessions of a High School Loser, Part 2

High School reunions don't have to include the posing and cliquishness you remember from that time.

When I said I was going back to ground zero, Kelowna Secondary School, for my 30th high school reunion, I did not realize how apt the metaphor would be. My high school was razed to the ground and now the site is ignominiously the city’s snow storage area in winter. KSS, however, has risen, Phoenix-like, in a new location. Probably a good thing as a third of the school burned down during our final year – an event remembered because the cause was arson and one girl tragically died.

I discovered that you can go back in time, but you do not necessarily know who you are there with. A small prayer of thanks to the inventor of the “Hello, my name is….” tag. Because I am so short, my eye level hits the tag almost exactly, so I don’t appear to be visually combing a former classmate’s anatomy searching for a name. Nevertheless, by some neurological miracle, the synapses of my brain did connect in interesting ways – the names of people who I had not thought of in years magically popped out when I saw them. A few I recognized by voice and mannerism. Embarrassingly, there were many I had no memory of whatsoever, but in a graduating class of more than 400 and the passage of 30 years, this was a mutually shared experience.

My personal challenge was augmented by the fact that the city has grown fourfold since my family moved here in 1971. No longer the small and sleepy agriculture-and-tourism oriented town it once was, Kelowna is now a booming metropolis. But don’t think Toronto or Vancouver – it’s more like “Mississauga-in-the-mountains,” replete with monster homes, roadside plazas, more Starbucks locations than I could count, and the biggest shopping mall between Calgary and Vancouver. There’s even a restaurant called “The Bohemian Café,” which would have been bohemian had it actually been here in the 1970s (but the food was very good nonetheless). Overall, the city is still predominantly white and middle class, but I did notice that there is now a synagogue and a Sikh temple. And, sadly, homeless people populate the downtown as they do in virtually every city in this country.

Kelowna also has serious issues to contend with: StatsCan just released figures that rank the city as having the fourth highest crime rate in Canada! (The local politicians blame the tourists.) Mind you, for all I know, I may have instigated this long-term trend when, in Grade 12, a friend and I spray-painted “Agent Orange Lives” on construction hoarding kitty-corner to our school. We were trying to be artfully and radically clever – protesting against the impact of Agent Orange on Vietnamese civilians while at the same time reminding our fellow citizens that one of the herbicides used to make the defoliant was about to be dumped in Okanagan Lake to kill Eurasian water milfoil, an imported botanic plague that caused much civic angst at the time. It was a thrilling experience, and I felt like a cross between Rachel Carson and Kathy Boudin. Unlike the sins of hitchhiking and drugs, which my high school loserdom dictated I stay away from in any event – I was making a statement. But as my partner-in-crime soberly reminded me this weekend, nobody actually “got it.”

Much of the advice I received from friends and acquaintances before getting on the plane to Kelowna did not prove helpful. One cautioned me “not to screw up my marriage” by hooking up with former classmates, reminding me this happens “all the time” at high school reunions and it’s a major reason people why go to them. Really? How one would even begin to do this kind of sociological/anthropological research and get it past a university ethics review board is beyond me. Another suggested that I be on the lookout for biker gangs, because Kelowna is a regional centre of the drug trade and folks “of my age” are in a position to be serious dealers and kingpins. However, there was no sign of class of ’80 posses riding in on their hogs, and not much cruising that I noticed.

Instead, the scene was predictably respectable, and I’m sure rather boring for the many partners who attended. Most fun was the “meet and greet” event on the first night, which was more or less a “grads only” affair, meaning that the awkward introduction of spouses and incorporation of them into conversations was largely avoided. There was the “shock and awe” of seeing so many people for the first time after three decades (probably amplified by a tad too much vodka on my part); the thrill of connecting up with high school friends that, in my frenzy to move on and out, I had lost touch with; and the sadness of hearing that a number of my fellow grads had passed away.

Surprisingly, I never felt awkward or lacking for conversation. Indeed, on the second night, I avoided the dance floor entirely because, well, talking to people was just so much more interesting. We laughed about the sturm und drang of high school, and after 30 years, all the preconceived notions we had of each other back then seemed to melt away. We could have been inside a Nora Ephron script, sincerity mixed with sentiment, all heartfelt and genuine.

But, to be honest, I was disappointed that more than half of the class did not show up, including, apparently, many who still reside in Kelowna. One friend declared to me that “she would sooner chew her arm off than attend,” suggesting that the reunion would be the same high school posing and cliquishness all over again. It was not. I’m not certain of all the motives for why so many stayed away, but as a social scientist, I figure it’s kind of like analyzing referenda. You can measure the “yes” and “no” votes accurately, but not the myriad of individual reasons that prompted those responses. I’m hoping there are some KSS class of ’80 grads out there that read this and comment below.

This is the second part of a three part series. For part one, click here.