First off, I'm so darned proud of my friend April, who defended her PhD dissertation today. She set standards for academic rigor, professionalism, and grace under pressure that will be difficult to follow. It was ABSOLUTELY, without a doubt, the best day of this semester for me, even though it wasn't my dissertation.
OK, I'm sitting here with a rather large glass of scotch (probably $7 worth of Laphroaig), thinking about realities that no longer exist. Yeah, I know, that makes me no different than any other aging blogger. "Get over it, dumbass." Ah, but I don't have to, at least not right this moment. It's MY blog, and you can't make me. Supposedly Piaget wrote for himself, to sort out his thinking, and I'll bet once in a while that writing included stuff that had very little to do with child cognitive development, and more to do with scotch-driven musings.
Recently something brought back the memory of me and my friend Mark playing a sax duet (a Bach transcription, Two-Part Invention in F Major) on a rural Indiana bridge late one night, bathed in the glow from the headlights of a 1980 Ford Pinto. Mark, to his credit, is not dead, though I daresay it's been 20 years since he touched a saxophone. As for me, I have rehearsal every Wednesday night... I'm looking forward to tomorrow's music-making...
The first two guys in my class to hit puberty were me and a kid named Ted. As a result, we found ourselves singing in the high school chorus while in 7th Grade, because Junior High chorus had no part for guys who sang bass. Well, Ted died about 5 years ago, of widespread cancer, at maybe age 35.
Through high school, especially the later years, I spent a lot of time with fellow Pinto-driver Bob. We planned to go to college together, but it just didn't work out for him. And then he had the misfortune of dying in a car wreck in 1991, at age 24. I was away on a religious retreat at the time.
My best friend through much of high school was Marty. After high school, Marty joined the USMC, and went to Iraq in the FIRST Gulf War. No, he didn't die. Marty is alive and well, and the former PFC has risen to Major (a beneficiary of the bloodthirsty neocon-driven Government's approach to creating "peace" through militarily-achieved implementation of structural democracy). However, we've corresponded a little over the years, and one thing is clear: our paths have been so radically divergent that there is now no common ground between us. Our former reality is gone just a completely as if one or the other of us had died.
Of course there's Thomas, as written about several days ago. Today is the one-year anniversary of his suicide. That reality ended abruptly and shockingly.
My huge crush through most of high school was a girl named Shannon, who constantly left me tongue-tied and intimidated (without ever trying). She died of cancer last June 29th, another good person cut down in her prime.
A couple of weeks ago my wife's uncle died after falling from a ladder, dead in his mid 50s. Too early, too young. Yet he was already a widower himself, because he lost his wife, the dear Aunt Karen, to cancer three years earlier, at age 51.
About six weeks ago my cousin died, I think from a diabetic "episode", at age 50-ish. That means her parents, my aunt and uncle, have now buried two of their three children.
I hear older people (like my 79 year old Dad) say that it seems like they are at the funeral home ALL THE TIME. But I'm only 41... that seems awfully young to start ramping up the funeral frequency.
Perhaps the writing has been on the wall ever since Mom's death in a bomb blast nearly 36 years ago. A bizarre and tragic foreshadowing of things to come.
So, on a mildly less morbid note, what realities are gone but not as a result of death and dismemberment...
Geez, I dunno. At the risk of sounding like "Uncle Rico", the 1980s were really amazing. I'm proud that I can truly call myself a child of the Eighties: I entered my teens on the second day of the 1980s, and was thus not quite 23 when they ended. All my most intense formative experiences were in that decade, so I feel like the soundtrack of my life features people like John Mellencamp, The Police, The Cars, Journey, late Chicago, The Bangles, Pat Benatar, Van Halen... an incredible time. Back when MTV played music videos, featuring MUSIC and VIDEO, nearly 24 hours a day (interrupted only by Kurt Loder's occasional attempts at serious MTV News breaks). Having a mild crush on Martha Quinn, one of the original MTV Veejays... wanting to be a Bangles groupie (OK, a Susanna Hoffs groupie)... Anyway, that's a reality that is gone now. Or is it? If I'm a radical constructivist, I believe I create my own reality, and if I close my eyes and concentrate, I can almost be in 1984 again... ah, but not quite. No matter how much I decenter, I can never quite experience the reality of 1984 Stacey. I can no more step outside my currently-constructed reality to experience my 1984 reality than I can step outside of my current reality to experience someone else's current reality. But I can damned well try.
And what were those formative experiences? Let's see... plays (The Glass Menagerie, Up the Down Staircase, Cheaper by the Dozen), musicals (The Music Man, Anything Goes, The King and I, Shenandoah, Damn Yankees, The Sound of Music), varsity tennis (1st Doubles), playing the sax constantly (district solo contest, state solo contest, ISU band camp - "there was this one time, at band camp..." - never mind, wrong movie), Dave Kavanaugh's math classes (7th grade math, 9th grade algebra, 12th grade trigonometry and analytic geometry), intramural soccer at RHIT (for those who think I am nonviolent, I can give you a list of people to talk to), driving laps in Loogootee singing along with the radio, my "first time", the National Spelling Bee at the start of the decade (1980 and 1981), first job, first car... and of course HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL. In my town of 2700 people, the high school gymnasium seats about 4000 - that should tell you something. Our coach stayed at LHS for about 47 years, and in that time had TWO losing seasons. He holds the record for most victories by an Indiana HS coach, with a roughly 75% winning percentage, and an average of almost 18 wins per year (and a season consisted of 20 games plus a single-elimination state tourney). Did you know that of the 20 largest high school gymnasiums in the USA, 19 are in Indiana? My Dad and I used to go to all 20 games a year, including the ones that required a 90-minute drive each way. On those drives we built a bond that endures - the part of the 1980s that didn't die on 12/31/89.
Due to an unfortunate interaction between scotch and prescription medications, this post must now end. Til next time...
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