classof99

[classof99]

SPAM

There are no big, defining moments to my relationship with Diane. She was soft-spoken and homely, a nice girl who didn’t get a lot of attention from the boys. My fondest and, in fact, only memory of her is that she’d let me borrow pencils in math class when I forgot mine.

After high school, Diane was part of our class’ ten-year reunion committee whose job it was to track down our graduating class. She got a hold of me through Brian Goodlow and I passed along my email address so she might keep me in the loop with the festivities. Not long after our reunion though, I began to receive more than I expected from Diane. More and more E-MAILS... Diane was trying to sell me skincare products.

Easy to ignore at first, I didn’t necessarily realize what was happening until the same e-mails continued to appear in my inbox, week after week, often when I was most overwhelmed at work. It was like Chinese water torture, with varying levels of capitalization and increasingly aggressive punctuation.

It finally dawned on me that I was on some sort of “list.”  Diane had presumably lifted the entire class of ‘99 contact list in order to hawk her PYRAMID SCHEME SKINCARE PRODUCTS!

I never replied to her e-mails hoping maybe she’d get the hint and take me off her list.

Nope.

I kept getting them.

For years.

Part of the blame is mine – I could’ve easily hit the UNSUBSCRIBE link at the bottom but I never did because I thought it might hurt Diane’s feelings. After all, she let me borrow pencils in math and that is a bond one never forgets.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, Diane wouldn’t be the last. The older we got, the more female high school classmates turned to PYRAMID SCHEME SKINCARE PRODUCTS to make a little side hustle. All “independent consultants,” of course... Was this like our generations’ Tupperware parties?

Just as abruptly as Diane’s e-mails had started, they stopped. I was relieved to have a less crowded inbox but things soon took another turn. Diane had taken a job at a commercial real estate brokerage firm and transitioned her entire e-mail list over. Last week I received an e-mail blast offering a $3 million dollar equestrian facility. Just what I needed...

I still haven’t worked up the nerve to unsubscribe.

GARY’S PLATITUDE

Cast your networking net far and wide. Keep in touch – you never know who can connect you!

BIT OF WISDOM

If you are more than 6 years out of high school, don’t give out your e-mail address to old classmates. Ever.

[classof99]

A TALE OF TWO PITCHERS (a true story)

I hate to put people in a box, but Boyd was a meathead straight out of central casting. I only ever had a class or two with him during high school but he was easy to figure out. Socially Boyd oozed a certain playful arrogance which many found either charming or gross. He was tall and lean with an all-American jaw and perfect sandy blonde hair. His sense of humor generally floated between third and fourth grade. He loved the ladies but, most of all, he loved baseball.

You see, my high school always had a great tradition with baseball. Whether it was the coaching, name recognition, or just dumb luck, they truly excelled over the years. Even as I write this now, we have three alumni currently playing in the major leagues.

I didn’t keep tabs on the baseball team but ignorance was difficult to maintain. During the spring, the morning announcements almost always included an update on the team’s latest victory. Senior girls hung homemade posters around school with their favorite players’ number and words of encouragement and cooked up homemade treats on game days.

But, as the universe would have it, Boyd was only our SECOND best pitcher.

As a freshman, Boyd was the starting pitcher for the junior varsity team. Sophomore year he made varsity which was no small feat considering how stacked the team was with talent.

But, thirty miles outside of town, at a rural county high school, there was another young pitcher, also a sophomore, who was turning heads... Mark.

Mark was affable if dense, not blessed with a great deal of personality. He was shorter than Boyd, stockier, and kept his brown hair buzzed around the sides. Military style. But what Mark lacked in personality, he more than made up for with his left arm. At the age of 16, NATIONAL BASEBALL PUBLICATIONS named Mark as a “Player to Watch”.

How exactly Mark came to play at our school is still the stuff of speculation & mystery. Rumor had it that a wealthy alumni (and former baseball player) offered to pay Mark’s tuition if he would transfer after an outstanding year playing “out in the sticks” (yes, we were a low-key private school. I liked to refer to us as the “blue collar private school” as there were two other private high schools in town with tuitions 3 to 4 times higher). To this day, Brian Goodlow is rather obsessed with the matter, playing up the cloak-and-dagger aspect. I suspect he’s resentful of not having had a mysterious wealthy benefactor take an interest in him.

On the mound, a rivalry was brewing. At least, in Boyd’s mind. Sophomore year began with Mark pitching for the varsity baseball team. Boyd was mostly relegated to first base and his opportunities to pitch over the next three years were few and far between, usually during a 3-game week when the coaches thought it best to rest Mark’s arm.

For the next three years, Mark was selected as All-City by the local paper. Junior year, NATIONAL BASEBALL PUBLICATIONS named Mark as one of the best high school pitchers in the country. In. The. Country. (It was curious, however, that Boyd was voted Most Athletic by our class. Maybe we knew something everyone else didn’t…)

As graduation approached, Mark was offered a full college athletic scholarship to BIG STATE SCHOOL #1.  BIG STATE SCHOOL #1 was an elite college baseball powerhouse. They had been to the last few College World Series and had an unequaled track record of players making the daunting leap into the majors. It was exactly where any high school baseball player would have wanted to be.

Boyd, too, was offered a college scholarship. To BIG STATE SCHOOL #2. Not on the same level as BIG STATE SCHOOL #1, but still something to be proud of. Boyd went in with the expectation that he’d play first base, as he’d done in high school but the coaches thought it best to redshirt him for his freshmen year.

Sophomore year of college arrived and Mark was a starting pitcher at BIG STATE SCHOOL #1. He was recognized around campus and had turned into something of a big shot although, to his credit, he maintained a sense of small town modesty.

That same year, the coaches at BIG STATE SCHOOL #2 had more first base talent than they knew what to do with so, in an effort to get Boyd more playing time, they offered him a spot in the pitching rotation. He jumped at the opportunity.

Both Boyd and Mark pitched for their respective teams the last two years of college. Both were well respected, both broke some of their school’s pitching records, and both were drafted into the minors. But that’s where their stories diverge.

Within two and a half seasons of minor league action, Boyd broke through to the majors. He was called up by WILDLY POPULAR MAJOR LEAGUE TEAM and shined when given the opportunity to play. Less than five years later, I watched Boyd throw the final pitch of the final game of the BIG ONE and win it all.

Yes, that BIG ONE.

Boyd’s stature soared. He was on the cover of MAJOR SPORTS MAGAZINE (twice!) and even represented his entire team as the guest on SYNDICATED LATE NIGHT TALK SHOW. Less than ten years after high school graduation, Boyd had a breathtaking upward trajectory and attained the status of true sports rock icon. At least, for the moment.

Mark spent a couple more years toiling in the minor leagues and called it a career. For whatever reason, things just didn’t quite click. Last I heard, he was working a 9 to 5, like the rest of us.

And there’s no disrespect to Mark here. Let’s be clear about that. Working hard and doing everything you can to make your dreams come true is, essentially, all you can ever do. If you’re paying attention, that’s one of those hallowed platitudes from the commencement speech.

Boyd continued to play in the majors for a few more seasons, got traded around, signed a new contract for somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 million (or so it was reported) but, as his ability and stature slowly declined, his playful arrogance morphed into a short fuse and a bad temper. He eventually cut off all contact with anyone from school. He’d let his high school best friend know their friendship was over when he “no-called, no-showed” to his wedding.

Boyd lost significant portion of his fan base when, at a home game, he was called off the mound after a streak of soft pitches. After some “boos” from the locals, he flagrantly grabbed his crotch at the stands. This didn’t exactly endear him to the home crowd.

In 2016, seventeen years after high school graduation, Boyd retired from professional baseball. At the time, a POPULAR SPORTS WEBSITE voted him one of the most disliked players in the history of the major league.

GARY’S PLATITUDE

Winning rarely teaches us anything ourselves – it is often through failing that we come to any sort of significant self-discovery.

BIT OF WISDOM

Don’t give up on yourself if you don’t succeed early on. But if you do make it, just try and not be a jerk, okay?

[classof99]

Where did we all go?

PREFACE

In 2019, I spend many late evenings at my local coffee shop putting together these (true) stories and writings with a friend more well-versed in writing than I. We’d hoped to share these stories as a book but then 2020 happened. Due to the pandemic and other factors, we decided to share these stories here rather than risk having them die on a hard drive.

Hope you enjoy.

all content is copyright by its anonymous authors @ 2021

[classof99]

INTRODUCTION

Someone, somewhere, likely with a vague spectrum of power and a cruel sense of humor, decided that forcing teenagers to sit through four long years of the unmitigated hell wasn’t enough. There had to be one last “learning” component before students were unleashed into the world – i.e., the commencement speaker...

Mom liked to remind me that I fell asleep during the commencement speech at my high school graduation.

She told the story often and with great relish.

I always knew it was coming at the holidays, because a twinkling lilt would bubble up in her and she’d touch my father’s arm and remind him that local celebrity real estate agent extraordinaire Gary Pace had been our speaker (yes, where I’m from, a real estate agent can attain quasi-celebrity status if he plasters his face on the side of enough public transit). My father would pat my mother's hand in return and shoot me an apologetic look. He knew what was coming.

“We could see him from the nosebleed! Remember, honey?” she'd say to dad, talking about me like I wasn't there. “He was just sitting there and all of a sudden – bloop – his little head drops to one side, and falls onto his neighbor's shoulder,” she said, volume rising, her half-and-half tea slipping over the brim of her glass as she slapped the table in delight.

She'd turn to me directly then:

“How did you manage to fall asleep? During your high school graduation, no less!”

“Well, if you remember I worked – ” but she'd cut me off, not really asking so much as wanting to retell the story.

“ – On, uhm... who was it again?”

“Brian Goodlow”

“BRIAN GOODLOW! That's right. What a lovely boy. Do you still see him?”

You see, what mom remembers the most was the scattered laughter of my classmates as I nodded off, causing Gary Pace to lose his place (we heard later he'd taken it as a personal insult that someone -- me -- dared not to be completely spellbound by the most didactic of commencement speeches).

Not that Gary would have cared, but I had a legitimate excuse. I'd worked the previous night until 3 am as a projectionist at the movie theater. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace had just been released and I was working the midnight screenings.

I don’t remember exactly at what point I fell asleep during Gary's speech, but I do recall waking to find Brian Goodlow gently petting my hair. It was the closest we’d ever been despite always sitting next to each other due to the fact that our last name's occurred alphabetically.

Among the many things we suffered through that day, the most pandering may have been Gary Pace's self-aggrandizing speech itself:

“Dare to dream!”

“March to the beat of your own drum!”

“Live life to the fullest!”

The obvious mistake Gary Pace made here -- one shared by many highly educated alumni-turned-commencement speakers -- was that he should have known that high schoolers so close to receiving their diplomas are BEYOND learning anything new. Like, over it. They’ve spent the last 13 years absorbing every last detail that every well-meaning teacher could cram between their eyes and ears.

But what do we do? Each school invites a speaker, usually an alumni, and in our particular case, the indomitable and balding Gary Pace, to come give a speech to the bright young stars of tomorrow. He'll remind us that, decades before, he sat in the very same spot with the same ambitions we hold deep, and would serve up an onslaught of platitudes and non-sequiturs of what he'd learned since.

But we, as with most graduating classes, were a captive audience of malcontents, sweating profusely underneath our caps and gowns, generally unfazed by the generic one-size-fits-all life advice being hurled at us from notecards at the podium. I was very busy pondering that things that came next: freedom and what I could only hope would be an endless summer between me and the next four years of college.

We were the class of 1999 — the last graduating class of the millennium (also known as BCC: Before Common Core). Not since the class of 999 had there been so much self-appointed pressure for a class to “go out and do great things” – thank you, Gary, for that pearl.

While I’d like to believe that we all went on to do great things for ourselves and for society, I know it’s simply not true. Not to say that none of us did anything great, just not all nearly four hundred teenagers sitting in that auditorium that May afternoon in 1999 did. Some of us grew up, other didn’t. Some of us succeed and yet others failed and fell down. Some of us didn’t even make it far enough to note a difference.

To frame the stories that follow, please understand a few things (I’m looking at you Gen-Z)... The class of 1999 was born in 1980-81. We were the “Me Generation”, the tail end of Generation X. Latchkey kids who spent summers with MTV on while our parents were at the office. We microwaved our grilled cheeses on Styrofoam plates even though we kinda knew better. Smoking was still cool, kinda. We made it through high school without cell phones, e-mail or any relevant use of the internet which, in hindsight, has probably saved us all from a lot of embarrassment as adults. A weekend might involve a trip to the local music shop to, ya know, buy CDs. How downright old-fashioned!

But, perhaps most importantly, for the purposes of this story anyways, is that when previous generations graduated from high school, they genuinely lost track of each other which is what made a high school reunion so enjoyable. Discovering what became of everyone. Or what didn't. Today with social media, old high school acquaintances tend to circle each other in an uncomfortable, peripheral social media orbit for years and years after graduation. It's much harder to lose track of everyone, which is a true shame, because losing track of everyone after high school is a great and well-earned privilege.

As I sat there, in May 1999, at the end of my high school career, waiting to make my way up to the stage to grab my diploma, I took a moment to absorb the countless young faces around me. In a curious moment of reflection, I wondered what would happen to each of them. Would they achieve what, if anything, they sought to do with their lives. What ironies did the universe have in store for us collectively?

I catch myself remembering certain people at the most random of times – how they were then and what they made of themselves – and can only imagine what Gary Pace might have said about them. It's been my experience that the lessons you learn in real life are hardly close to the vague horseshit you’re lectured with at graduation. In fact, some time’s there no nice way to wrap up the experiences or expectations of life. Some times it just is.

After graduation, I went onto college and kept in touch with a few of my high school friends. We’d get together over summers or Christmas breaks, only to fall away from each other again afterwards. Even when we did get together, it wasn’t as if we were measuring how daring we’d all been, as Gary had suggested. We were just living our lives, however they came.

Most of my classmates went on to do what most adults try and do in the here and now: college, marriage, a few kids, maybe a divorce (but hopefully not), probably a 9 to 5. As it turns out, though, more than a few of my classmates had stories worthy of one of Gary’s platitudes.

Thanks to the unbreakable bond between Brian Goodlow and I, my mother’s general nosiness, and the burdensome genius of Facebook, Instagram, etc., I’ve managed to collect some of the more interesting stories from my class; stories about the things that actually happen after you graduate.

The following stories are true, almost entirely. However, names have been changed, identifying details have been tweaked and obvious things have been left appropriately VAGUE.

Stay awake. This time it’s worth it.