Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Most of my friends (school-wide) are at nearby universities (or specialized colleges like CO School of Mines, etc.) like CU (including me), CSU, UNC, CU Denver, UWyo, etc. Several are at universities a day's drive away (Montana State, UNM, UNL, KU, Mizzou). A couple more are further.
The most common major among my band friends that I graduated with is engineering of some sort, including me - I'm a civil engineering major. The next most common is music education/performance.
Curious...what's CU Denver like? I understand that, being an urban campus, it has a lot of the graduate programs, a smaller enrollment than Boulder, and no frat/sorority types crawling over you. Is that right?
i went to 2 very different high schools. one, many went to prison or to army some made it back only to become druggies.
the other school they were upwardly mobile and made out great very few crashed and burned.
The original post elicited an uncharacteristically deep and wicked laugh from me: guttural, primordial, visceral.
I don't let my family go back to that place with me. I don't want to pollute them through contact with those people. I didn't let my Husband or Kids meet my mom. And I sure wouldn't let them see the world, or the people, that I left at seventeen.... a waif with two little suitcases, bought and filled for me, mostly, by the only two white ladies in that mudhole of a 'community'.
I go back for funerals. The 'community' is deep in the countryside, an intersection of two minor highways. I borrow a light-armored limousine from a friend in Jackson, and have a guard by my side. He watches and listens, and when someone is about to hit me up for money, sticks a phone in front of my face. I pretend to take a call.
"Is that her Husband?" "Naw! That's her Fancy Man." "That's her Pimp. He don't let her outa his sight!" "She ain't got no Husband. She's a ***** like her Momma an' her Grammaw an 'em. But she's one o' them high-priced ones up in Jackson." "She wuz butt-ugly when she lived down here. But when she got up ta college, the coaches put her on them Steroids, an' then pimped her out ta tha bidnismen whut went ta that school. They'd git her up in them Sky Boxes at tha Stadium, an' take turns, right there, watchin' the game. I hear she can crack Pecans with..."
(that poor little university has never had 'Sky Boxes' at its stadium)
I'm not about to tell them I've moved to Oregon. And I use my old name, when I'm in my old town. Don't want to dirty my new one, by using it there. Even if they knew my new name, they'd lack the sense to google it. And if they want to see me as a glamorous courtesan, drinking champagne from long, tacky, flutes, while writhing on bearskin rugs with...what?....Arab Sheiks???.... well, that's something they can understand, because they've seen something like that in an MTV video. Why dirty my real, infinitely more quotidian skills: running offices and building teams, by telling these people about what I do? Why dirty my real life by letting these creatures touch it? Let them invent one to fit their perceptions.
blurryvision....blurryvision....rotating screen....back in time...back in time....
Tommy was a big football player. Part Indian like me and most of the 'community'. Long torso, short arms and legs, V-shaped body, bubble butt, thick, blue-black hair, cute little ski-slope nose, shocking green eyes...he was sooooo hot. And he was mean, "Just playin' wit-cha!" I, and the school's two Gay guys, were the chief victims of Tommy and his friends.
Wayne was a friend of Tommy's. Taller and thicker and somewhat whiter, Wayne was renowned as a 'ripper' of young women. He was mean, too.
The other guys were variants on this theme. The ones who played sports had those super-hot bodies young Indians can have.
The popular girls were charmers. Some would pierce other girls' ears. Then, they'd lure girls out into the woods, and hold pillows or clothes over their faces, while the boys deflowered them.
There were a couple of light-skinned black families whose kids were the aristos of the community. They owned a good bit of land, which had been in their families since before the Civil War. They were gorgeous, and kept to themselves. They mostly moved away, and quickly moved, through Affirmative Action, into high positions and elite professions.
My Gay friends both killed themselves before they could get to college.
The hot-looking Football studs, and their hot cheerleader 'pieces', turned into shapeless lumps. They smoke and drink and eat sugary garbage: and they look like they do. Most live in trailers. Some are Meth addicts and small-time dealers. Some farm the land owned by the aristocratic Black families. One runs his father's run-down convenience store/gas station. One sells insurance, but the cheap sort of policies you don't get rich selling.
Tommy fell out of a Deer Stand while hunting. He's paralyzed from the waist down. Wayne, who used to help Tommy terrorize the Gay guys, got caught on the Natchez Trace, bending over for some dude. He lost his local delivery job, and now is struggling as a long-haul trucker. He's diabetic and has high blood pressure, and his claim to fame is now pretty-much limp and useless. He's divorced, and lives with his Mama. The doctors have started carving her up, and his own time for that is coming up soon enough.
Except for the landowning Blacks, nobody became a Physician. Nobody became an Attorney. Most of my old classmates come up to me, cringing... voices unnaturally high... "We always knew you were goin' places...always readin' and plannin!" (Lies. They openly mocked me, back then.) And when their voices start to go in-tremolo, and my guard senses they are about to beg for money, he sticks that phone in my face, and I pretend to take a call.
Last edited by GrandviewGloria; 03-25-2012 at 03:17 AM..
It's been 46 years. I don't know and I don't give a damn. I've seen one person I knew in high school in the last ten years. Nice guy, but never that close as a friend. He needed to stop smoking about 30 years ago. It's not been good to him.
I didnt really like high school so when I graduated I was eager to leave it behind. I bounced around the area and only ran into a few people from my class, over a span of 15 years. I left the area for good and people started finding me on Facebook. Curiosity got the better of me and I started accepting people only to later delete them. Pretty much everyone stayed the same or got a whole lot stranger. The wackos got deleted pretty quickly. I grew up in the burbs of Detroit and my city was mostly blue collar. The boys went on to work at the auto plants and the girls went to work in offices. Very few went on to college and the ones that did, left the area.
I went home to visit family and was asked to meet up with a few people that I went to school with. I think what kind of amazed me is they still do the same things they did when they were in high school. Party on the weekends and hang at the same bars they did when they turned 21. They are not bad people but I realized within the first five minutes that I had nothing in common with them. Most rarely travel and pretty much the conversations revolved around high school days or the people we grew up with. I found the topics to be pretty limited and since I hadn't had contact with anyone over the years I felt a little left out of the conversation. Many have divorced and with Facebook are reconnecting with old high school boyfriends and getting remarried. I was surprised to learn that quite a few people had died either from drugs, suicide, car accidents and/or cancer. It made me feel old. There are two people from my graduating class that have had some moderate success as a musician and acting. Kind of weird to hear the one guy on the radio. I remember sitting next to him in science class. Other than that no real surprises. Most people are ordinary and live ordinary lives which includes myself.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
