The forgiveness of forgetfulness

I’m not saying this in an attempt to be funny, but I’d made a mental note to read a Yahoo story last week about memory loss and it slipped my mind.

Completely forgot about it.

Human memory has been on my mind for two months since I danced through the memory minefield that is the 30th high school reunion. I am amazed by the variations of our recollections from those heirloom days.

For instance, one girl, a good friend of mine, said the thing she remembers most about me is that I was never without a big wad of snuff tucked into my lip.

Funny, I said, because I didn’t remember you being insane. I’ve never once in my life had a even a pinch of snuff in my mouth.

Yet, her enduring memory of me is I was the friendly kid with the tobacco spit dribbling out of his smile.

How odd is that?

Then there was the good buddy of mine who’s spent the past 35 years attributing one of my greatest pranks to someone else.

It was Miss Picci’s 8th grade chorus class. We were walking in line from the basement class to the first floor auditorium. She was on DefCon 4 to make sure we all behaved.

Now, there’s a woman who could have used a soothing dip of Copenhagen.

Me, Doug and the other troublemakers were in the front of the line so she could keep an eye on us. It was like a miniature version of one of those perp walks you see on the news.

I waited until we got to the big heavy doors at the stairway. I gave the door a mighty yank straight into my kicking boot. It echoed like a thunderclap.

Miss Picci turned with a look of startled horror in time to see me grasping my head with both hands and moaning, “Why, Doug? Why?” right before I began faking concussion-like symptoms.

I’ll never forget what happened next. She lit into poor Doug like she wanted to kill him. Said she never did like him. Said he was no good. That I was always her favorite. That he couldn’t sing a lick and that she’d see he’d get suspended for a month if what he’d done had ruined my handsome young face.

See, my recollections are crystal clear.

Yet, when I overheard Doug telling the story of this Hall of Fame-worthy prank . . . he said it was Schwartz!

An outrage. The slight made me want to drag him to the stairway hall door and make like Joe Pesci on his head.

That wasn’t even the worst of it.

No, that was the girl I remember from her sexy jungle girl suit.

I was standing alone at the bar when she walked up. I have an indelible memory of her wearing the outfit to her 1980 Halloween party to which she’d invited me.

I glanced at her nametag and said hello.

She looked at my name tag and dismissively said, “I have no idea who you are!”

I’m sure it wasn’t her cruel intention to make me feel like a nobody, just as it wasn’t my intention to make her feel like a slut when I said, “Sure you do. You invited me to your Halloween party our senior year. You wore that skimpy little Tarzan outfit. I wore a diaper and dressed like a big baby. We made out at midnight beneath the pool table in your basement. Remember?”

She did not. In fact, I think the clarity of my recollection upset her because she began backing away without ordering a drink and avoided me the whole rest of the night.

The reason we forget chunks of our silly pasts is because our minds are forever being refreshed by new memories.

Our minds in high school are canvasses yet to be colored.

Back then, I didn’t have things like kids, anniversaries, the complete rosters of five new world championship Pittsburgh teams and the lyrics of 248 songs by Robert Earl Keen and Todd Snider important enough to commit to memory.

You know now that I think about it, maybe I did have a dip or two of snuff back in high school. Maybe it is my memory that’s off because, yeah, that Schwartz kid was damn funny.

And, if memory serves, maybe I was wrong about the girl in the Tarzan suit.

Maybe it wasn’t her after all.

Must have been her mom.

Mr. Fancy's 30th high school reunion

My daughter, 5, complains full-day kindergarten is a drag. She wondered if there was anything she could do to make it less boring?

I nearly blurted out the perfect solution:

Grow breasts.

Because that’s when it all gets really, really interesting.

The Mt. Lebanon High School class of ’81 had its 30th reunion Saturday night at PNC Park in Pittsburgh. That meant nearly 200 of us were tingling with recollections of the emotional crucible from when boys and girls become biologically capable of conceiving children while still acting like them.

The 30th reunion is where a bunch of 48 year olds stand around congratulating one another on how fabulous we all look secretly relieved there are no honest 18 year olds to rebut the compliments.

High school memories are indelible. If you’re kind to someone they remember it forever. If you’ve ever been mean to someone, it’s a nasty grudge they’ll forever bear.

Truth of the latter was slammed home to me at the last reunion I attended.

I was sitting at the bar by myself when a muscular gear head with cut-off sleeves got in my face and said, “I remember you. You always thought you were better than me. Well, what about now, Mr. Fancy? Still think you’re better than me?”

I gave him a good long look and thought, yeah, I am better than you.

Because this wasn’t my reunion and I’d never seen the guy before in my life.

It was my wife’s reunion. She wanted me to attend to show all the mean girls she’d married a presentable guy who didn’t eat things like salad and pasta with his fingers (practiced for weeks).

Once that mission was accomplished, she immediately ditched me to flirt with old flames and I retired to the cocoon-like comfort of the bar.

Even after the guy’s nervous wife persuaded him I was innocent, I’m sure the guy still wanted to kill me. He was one of those misanthropes who instinctively hate handsome men like me with nice smiles like mine, but calculated that was insufficient reason to assault a stranger.

The episode convinced me bringing a spouse to a reunion was a bad idea.

I wouldn’t want Val to go through what she made me go through -- and I’m referring to confrontations with stupid bullies and not being abandoned in a bar, my natural habitat.

Plus, there’s this:

I didn’t want my darling wife there in case one of the 300 or so girls I spent puberty dreaming about came up to me and said she’d always had a crush on me and, hey, would I mind sneaking away to behind the Pirate dugout so we could make out?

Sadly, this didn’t happen and I blame a flaw of the reunion dynamic.

There’s no forced mingling. Some of the girls who may have been eager to make out with me might have been ensnared in long bouts of glibberish.

Glibberish is my word for pointless party chatter between two people who’d rather be talking to anyone else.

The reunion’s first hour should be like speed dating. Everyone in two long lines has to say hello to one another. A bell rings after four minutes and you move on to the next old classmate.

Then after an hour of this you can decide which people have evolved into worthwhile adults and which ones must be avoided like algebra.

I was fortunate to have had about five really soulful conversations and they were like Christmas ornaments, something to cherish.

There was some glibberish, but I had a ball.

I’ve been so fortunate with friendships throughout my life. I guess it’s because so much of what happens after high school is so repressive and serious and I’m not.

People seem drawn to that, at least all the people I’ve always liked.

It for me became the perfect reunion in the early morning as I was walking through downtown Pittsburgh back to my car and two beautiful women came up and proposed something more illicit than bleacher kisses.

Sure, they were hookers. I had the cash and with proper motivation can be a savvy haggler. But I declined because their proposition had already given my night a happy ending.

Thanks to them, I’ll be forever able to remember my 30th high school reunion as the night everyone said I looked great and two girls pestered me for sex.

All-in-all a damn good night for Mr. Fancy.

Don't ever say don't ever change

I sent in my $60 high school reunion registration fee and in 23 days will show up with multiple scores to settle.

I’ve for 30 years bore a grudge against the people who were once my very best friends, the ones who taught me all I know about laughter and friendship.

Today I resent them.

Why?

I’m the guy who never changed.

It’s scribbled in there all over my 1981 Mt. Lebanon (Pa.) High School yearbook: “Don’t ever change!”

Well, by God, I didn’t. And it’s been my ruin.

The high school reunion is a pivotal take-stock milestone. We look at our hairlines, our wrinkles, our midriffs and we time travel back to when we were all trim, beautiful and bubbling with enthusiasm about our rosy futures.

And, inevitably, we look at who we were and what we’ve become.

Today some of us are respected bankers, prestigious attorneys and celebrated educators.

People will embarrass these accomplished classmates by saying, “Tom! I remember you with that bowl haircut and those dorky glasses. And now look at you! Handsome in a tailored suit. I can hardly believe you’re the same guy who spent his whole junior year with his finger jammed up his nose!”

Tom will show he’s matured in other ways too by refraining from punching the uncouth lout in the kisser like he’ll surely deserve.

I confess I’m feeling a little anxious about attending. Not because I’ve become some sort of disgrace or have let myself really go to hell. No, my anxieties are symptomatic of my whole affliction.

I still get nervous around grown-ups.

I’ll hear some of them expertly conversing about the global economic upheavals, about college endowments and ground-breaking pharmaceuticals they’re helping to market.

Overhearing any of these cerebral discussions will be to drive me to the distant wall (the one nearest the bar).

Just like high school, I’ll be the guy in the back of the class giggling at all the fart jokes.

Is that anyway to go through life?

It began to dawn on me that I’ve never changed when a good friend’s mother told me her son had told her I’d never changed.

And I haven’t.

In many ways, my job description is exactly the same as it was when I was a paperboy and was paid to deliver stories.

The real shame is my income is roughly equivalent to what it was when I was a paperboy, too.

Informing people what I do for a living is always tricky for me. It often changes from week to week.

Some weeks I’m a bona fide author. That’s when I’m pitching book proposals and having discussions with editors and agents about the viability of my latest pipe dream.

Next week I’ll be a magazine writer again. I’ll be interviewing Arnold Palmer for about the 50th time. That tends to impress so I may go with that. Being quasi buddy-buddy with AP is one of the coolest things that’s happened to me since graduation.

Travel writer works, too. I’m doing two or three travel stories a week for msnbc.com and that sounds like a real job, even when most of the stories can be done by phone.

I hope to God I don’t blurt out “Blog!” when someone asks me what I do. I probably feel more like a professional blogger than anything else these days but everyone knows blogging doesn’t pay squat so they’ll burst out laughing and continue to laugh until they decide it’s time to give me a wedgie.

And, boy, will that take me back.

So how’ve I changed since high school? I weigh about 30 pounds more than I used to, am more hairy in some places and less hairy in others, and I don’t need to ask anyone if I can have the car on Friday night.

And I drink on school nights without having to produce a fake ID.

What happened?

I never changed. I remember being very happy in high school so it seemed like good advice.

In so many ways I guess I’m still a pretty happy little kid. And there’s a lot to be said for going through life happy as a high schooler.

If your old classmates were signing your year book today, would they urge you to remain the same or would they write, “Change! Now! Please!”

If it's the latter, come see me.

We should talk.