Beech Tree News Network

I got an email this week about our upcoming class reunion.  I don’t know if I’ll go or not.  I say it’s complicated.  It’s really not.  It has more to do with how I feel about myself than how I feel about my class or even how my class feels about me.
    I went to school with really smart people.  They became engineers, chemists, dieticians, lawyers and college professors.  I was always incredibly average, so I was somewhat intimidated, but it wasn’t because they made an effort to make me feel that way.  I’ve always heard that each class has a personality of its own.  I guess ours was the geek squad.  Bill Gates said once, “Be nice to nerds, you’ll be working for one someday.”  It was true of our senior class.
    I remember seeing a piece on one of the news channels about the difference between how American children and Japanese children are taught in school.  (This was a few years ago, so practices may be different today.)  The American kids are taught to compete with one another in the class room.  The Japanese students are taught to help one another.  If a Japanese student is struggling, he or she is paired with a student who has a firmer grasp on the subject matter.  My senior class was more like the Japanese model.  We tried to help one another, and considering the school system we grew up in, it’s a miracle we took that attitude.
    I went to school from grades one through five at Mt. Washington in Bullitt County, Kentucky.  I have often said that the Mt. Washington school system saved my life.  It was challenging, but most of all, it was fair.  All students were given the same chance to grow and excel.  We moved to Taylorsville by the time I started sixth grade.  I have often joked that the school system there was based on the Caste system of India.  The students were divided into three groups: high, middle, and low.  The groups were supposed to be structured along academic lines, but really the students were separated according to economic and social standing.  I was placed in the middle group, and to be honest, I felt more at ease there.  I felt sorry for the kids placed in the low group.  More times than not, they were treated like the untouchables. 
    When I was a junior in high school, a new superintendent moved into the area.  He abolished the tracking system, and the students were integrated.  I half-expected there to be riots—from the parents, not the students.  Some classes fared better than others.  The class behind mine struggled with the changes, still holding on to the social clicks they had grown accustomed to.  It says a lot for our class (the class of 1973) that the students became a cohesive group.
    Before we graduated, we decided to meet every five years, and we have.  I’ve attended all but one reunion, and I don’t know why I’m hesitating over this one.  After all, I’ve had a grandchild since the last get-together.  Won’t my friend Phylis be surprised!  At the last reunion, we had resigned ourselves to the idea that we would only have pictures of our grand dogs to show each other.
    I think I’m hesitating about this reunion because I’m a bit disappointed in myself.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m too old to have illusions of grandeur, but I still wish I had accomplished more by this point in my life.  My classmates won’t be disappointed in me.  We were the live-and-let-live kids of the seventies, and pretty much still are.  They won’t wear their titles into the room where we will meet.  They’ll be wearing buttons with their senior photos and names, and will tell you about their accomplishments only if you ask.  They were part of my life, I was part of theirs.  Maybe, the Taylorsville school system did its own part in saving my life.  The effects just took longer to show up.