Right Turns Down Wrong Streets

After being surrounded by sympathetic friends and family for the better part of the past week, last night I decided that since I've got the apartment to myself for the next couple of days, I would just stay in and decompress. Of course, there was nothing to write since my home internet hook-up has apparently been on vacation for two weeks. The "night in to relax" always sounds good on paper but rarely works out in reality. By 9PM, I was laid out on the couch, bored out of my mind, reading Radar magazine (still don't know what to think of it) and listening to old, mid-90s Sonic Youth at louder volumes than the moment prescribed. The ants were crawling all over my forlorn dinner plate and ocassionally venturing up my arm, making nap-time impossible. Since my roommate is more allergic to cleaning than a dog is to chocolate, my apartment was invaded by thousands of tiny, black snowmen with legs while I was gone. I'd cleaned the entire apartment earlier after work so now the leftover ants were desperate for anything, especially the apple core abandoned on the plate.

Television on Wednesday night sucks. Feeling bored and a little bit sad, I moved to the floor where I lay staring at my upside-down book shelf. Usually I'll just lie there and stare up at the books, trying to remember which have been completely read ("On the Road" goes without saying), partially read and how much I actually did read or why I stopped ("Paper Tiger" 63 pages b/c I just wasn't in the mood at the time), or never even touched except to move from apartment to apartment ("In Exile from the Land of Snows" it was a gift which means there's a 90% chance I won't read it but I hear it's good.) Curiously, my gaze fell upon an oversized blue, shiny spine and I had to think for a minute to place it in my library. First my leg twitched, then my shoulder swung wide and I was semi-up, slugging across the floor towards the book shelf, wheedling through the stack of forgotten Miles Davis photo-journals to pull out the mysterious book. It was my George Washington High School Senior Yearbook. Wow. I'd forgotten I'd carted it around from dorm room to one apartment after another since leaving Danville in 1996.

Reading through the signatures hastily signed in hallways and courtyards, I notice the same buzzwords repeatedly, "such a sweet guy," "keep in touch," "don't give up your music." However, "it's been great getting to know so much this year" sticks out the most. Thinking back, I guess that schoolyear and the summer before represented some sort of awakening both socially and personality-wise. No longer the shy kid, I remember boldly entering parties of the popular-elite, weed-toking hippies, or pimply band geeks, all with the same gusto and verve that lately has been relegated to only my brightest of days. I miss that ability to chat up anybody and form some sort of connection with them, however tenuous but regardless of wildly differing background, interests or cultural differences. Age and experience have their drawbacks as well.

Missing among the signatures are many of my fellow alumni that I now regard among my best friends from back home. I realized that I really didn't know them that well then. Only after the next party-filled summer and subsequent visits home from school had we grown to know each other. It's nice to think of those friendships as they formed, how much stronger they became once the shackle of high school class warfare was released. Sheer circumstance leads to friendship ninety-nine percent of the time. Sure, most say proximity as well but rarely is a good friendship planned. That's one of my favorite facts of life. (Sorry Natalie, seat taken.)

However, I also noticed that many times, I had trouble placing faces to the names. People who thought I was "smart" and "fun" were forgotten, at least until I looked up their picture. How many friendships do we heave over the side in order to pave way for new ones? Coming across a huge glossy of my high school friend Lyndsay Gillespie, I had to think when I last saw her. Seven years ago? Then, Lyndsay and I were really good friends. She played trumpet with me in the band and, especially during my senior year, became my partner in crime. Signed next to her photograph, she wrote, "Max, You are my favorite 'man in band.' I'll miss you so much next year. You simply must return to visit in order for me to smile. I hate you for going to UVa." among other things, scrawled across almost a full page and continuing onto the next. Seeing this made my nose crinkle to expose a silly grin. During my junior year at UVa, she confessed that, even though she was now all but engaged, she'd had a crush on me in high school. Looking at this now, how did I not realize that? It's not surprising that I didn't as I'm still pretty dumb in matters of love.

Even still, seeing this picture of Lyndsay made me remember our afternoon of big-time mischief, skipping class in order to sneak into extra-curricular activity yearbook photos for groups to which we never belonged. Hunting through each group photo, I found a few of them. There we are, members of the Math Club who never attended a single Math-stravaganza. Again, appearing in the backrow of the Future Farmers of America, Lyndsay actually holding my arm to keep me from running, thinking we'd been busted. Lyndsay, solo in the Drama Guild, shooting a gun at the camera with a cheeky wink at me, off-camera because I refused to look like "that much of a dork." (I remember actually saying that. I mean, I was in the marching band and I still said that...)

Finally, the coup de grace, Lyndsay and I both, in the very center of the picture, flaunting our crime for all to see with our Future Business Leaders of America pals, big, silly fake grins on our faces, flashing a thumbs up to the camera, cat-a-corner style. Needless to say, at this point my current self burst into a huge laughing fit, despite my empty apartment. I seem to remember that we were in a bunch more but the yearbook staff got tired of our antics and clipped us out of the rest. I also remember Lyndsey telling me that she tried again the next year but she was being watched as we'd inspired a whole slew of copycats, forcing the school to take roll before group shots. Some say pride is a sin.

I don't know how to end this entry. It's strange, the things I remember when looking back, the events that took place, forgotten lessons, and circumstances that I only now realize have shaped me into the man I am today. That's a pretty grand statement, a cliche wrapped in sentiment. However, for the most part, my only regrets are the people that have faded over the years. I've been spending a lot of time in my hometown as of late, both voluntary and not, walking the streets of downtown Main Street and photographing personal landmarks of my childhood. Danville has captured my heart again, making me no longer ashamed to call it my hometown, secreting it away from my everyday life as a sort of refuge. I guess last night my yearbook did much the same as I got the best night's sleep I've had since last Thursday.