Jusby

I brought up Ron and flashed back a whole year because he came up in conversation out in the smoking section. In fact, I’d seen him, watched DVDs (Final Destination 2 & Hostel) and checked out his newest guns on this visit.

In point of fact, I’d invited him to the picnic barbeque on the condition that he NOT bring any guns and NOT mow us all down. I joked that we’d have a metal detector wand and frisk.

He said he’d come, but it would only be to see me. He wasn’t interested in any of the others for ill or nil. I did let on that Tony Bracco was in contact with Cary Carlson. Ron and Cary weren’t speaking (and hadn’t for years). Always the therapist, I hoped I could get them back together. They had been best friends. He and Ron had planned a camping trip, but shortly before their scheduled departure Ron’s boss asked him to work. Ron acquiesced. Cary fumed. Ron walked away from the relationship and left a brand new sleeping bag (and a brand new eighth).

Actually Ron was there when I smoked my first cigarette. He GAVE me my first cigarette. He had invited me to sit in on his college Life Drawing class: to see the nekkid lady, of course. Afterwards he was smoking, and I said, “Gimme one of those!” I got a laugh out of him. He even narrated (to the universe), “Now he wants a cigarette!”

The day before the bar Trish and Orion arrived in West Linn, and we took Tasha for a walk down to what I call the 100 Acre Wood. Most folks call it the Mary S. Young state park. Someone had upgraded the park with signs at each of the trail intersections. Wouldn’t these have been useful 20 years ago, in the middle of the night?

Well, Mary S is the 100 Acre Wood because of Big Stones and Rox down at the bottom where the park meets the river and both are from Winnie the Pooh. It’s 3.19 Acres, actually with 8 trail miles, and it’s big enough to get lost in, especially in the middle of the night. Mary S. has great big trees and will probably be around for every class reunion party I could ever have. Plus you can walk there from Oma’s house – which won’t be her house by the next reunion. Anyway, Mary S. was a strong contender for our picnic site except that it doesn’t have playground equipment, so the new fangled Tanner Creek was going to have to do.

I got to talking about some of the high school issues that might come up. If we look at all of the articles for the Amplifier we’d see a pattern.

a) I always expressed a personal opinion.

b) I frequently had opinions about particular girls

c) My opinions were seldom favorable.

When I volunteered to cover the dance and drill team, the Debutantes, the laughter in Mr. Steven’s room erupted like Mt. St. Helens and darkened the skies of free speech.

I first had Greg Stevens as a teacher in 8^th grade, and he’d liked my writing, so I was loyal. He was an Australian ex-pat. He ran the photography class, the yearbook and the newspaper. I don’t think he believed his role included editing the content, but maybe he left me alone to learn from my own mistakes in that regard. I generally did not embarrass myself with grammar or spelling.

When the Debs won second at the state finals I wrote a typically gonzo piece that the coach intercepted before it went to press. Debbie Bujanski coached the team. They were Deb’s Debs. Cute, huh? She was also a math teacher. She’d been my geometry teacher, and I had had trouble staying awake – even in the front row. She was pale with short and pale blond hair. She was quite heavy set and generally jolly, but she had a temper. I nicknamed her The Albino Rhino. I never tempted fate so much as to comment on her size in my articles. It still strikes me as ironic that she would inevitably have had to teach dance moves she couldn’t do.

I count among my blessings that I never did see her attempt to demonstrate the shimmy-shake.

I recall that she had asked to discuss a prior article with me and the student editor, Stephanie Nutt. I surreptitiously taped the ‘conversation’ basically a preview of her wrath.

When the state piece caught her ire she stampeded over to Stevens’ room and demanded it be cut. She said, “I’d rather see nothing go in than that!”

It could have been a teachable moment for us all.

As a clown you learn that you, yourself, must be the object of ridicule. As a journalist, even a gonzo journalist, you might expose your own foibles but should take down as many of the bastards with you as you can.

Stevens reluctantly removed the piece. I was still in shock over the power of my words to stir emotions. I figured, “It’s not fair, but I did my job: observe and write. My grade will not be affected.”

At the park with Trish, I let her know that the worst was yet to come. After all, I may have quoted individual Debs but mainly I meta-mocked the idea that they deliberately attempted to lose their individuality.

“Personally, the idea of conformity and exactness does not call forth any positive emotions in me. I am afraid of the very type of mass uniformity that I had asked to go and report. ‘A learning, growing experience,’ I thought. The same sort of thing that all my teachers have been promoting. All Dance & Drill teams aim at precision. Their whole achievement brings on The Fear in me.”

I wrote a ‘worse’ piece after I’d been snubbed by my Slave for the Day. The Leadership Class had decided to auction off a popular girl to raise money for a dance. I decided I had to have her.

I had to be at a Thespian meeting, but I told two friends to bid my net worth of $27 on her. They wound up adding their own money so I could win her. The next morning, she met me and acted less than subservient to my every wish. She wouldn’t hold my hand as we walked through the hall to my locker. Was that too much to ask of the future homecoming queen? I told her, “You can go” but I hadn’t intended to free her. I expected to organize my tasks and commands and continue my power play through the remainder of the day. At lunch time she had split with her friends. My bidders were incensed and demanded satisfaction on my part, but they were only offered a half-refund by the Leaders. I acted like it was no big deal, but wrote an article called Lucky in Cards, Unlucky in Love. Ouch. The pen is mightier than the snub. I dreaded seeing her again, but I gradually wrapped my mind around the idea that I’d make some sort of apology and explanation.

I was about finished telling Trish about the hazards of giving a sexually frustrated adolescent a free column in the paper.

Mister Stevens, it turns out, was a bit sexually frustrated himself. In one issue he had created an ad for the local tanning salon with two bikini clad girls in the snow: an image that spurred the horse of puberty for many of us. Mr. Stevens no longer works at West Linn High. I got word from Jason Haas that one day he took more than pictures. He took, so Jason alleged, liberties.

Be that as it may, Mr. Stevens surprised me during our graduation ceremony by conferring on me an award for Excellence in Journalism along with a pin depicting a miniature printing press: his rebuttal to the Albino Rhino.

It kept me writing through the years to have earned that small token of his regard.

We reached a crossing of trails in Mary S. and Trish decided to take Tasha home. Orion and I continued down to the Wall (AKA River Viewpoint) and past the waterfall all the way to the river.

Orion promptly fell between a big stone and a rock at Big Stones and Rox and cried in pain, so we made our way back up to Oma’s as the sun set.

I told you that story so I could tell you this one: at the bar the following night I finally had the chance to stammer my apology to my one-time slave and she absolved me. She hadn’t wasted the 20 years in regret or recriminations. She’d put it out of her mind. We’d all forgotten things.

Jen Galloway seemed to have credited me with introducing her and Mike at a place called Humphrey Yogurt’s. I don’t recall such a place. Chris Bair credited me with giving him a copy of Santana’s Abraxas and blowing his mind. It’s possible, but I don’t recall it.

So now we’re back to the bar. I’m showing off my bottle of beer none too discretely and trying to ask if people have openers on their key chains. Little hors d’oeuvres are provided, but we’ve soon gone through them. As soon as I get my bottle opened I’m caught by the waitress and informed of the liquor laws. Jay tries to get me to pour it into his empty glass with his back turned to her. I drop the bottle face down into the glass and the bottom breaks out of it, spilling my beer on the floor.

Then he offers to buy me a beer. Eventually, four people have bought me beers.

At some point Trish calls and tells me that Orion’s still complaining of stomach pain, so they’re taking him to the hospital. Maybe they’ll be done by midnight. Then she calls back to say the doctors are talking possible appendicitis. I need to get my own ride home. Luckily, lots of folks still live in West Linn. Unfortunately, this ruins our plans to get Harry Potter 7 in the middle of hundreds of would-be-wizards.

The pressure to be done reunion-ing by midnight is off. I’m out in the smoking section and Janine offers me a free beer. I bring up Ron’s name. She tells me the sordid tale of their horrible date, his attempted suicide and the how he later befriended her rapist.