"I know why you skipped town last weekend," says Matt.
"Oh?"
"Yeah, your high school reunion, right?"
"How on earth did you know that?"
"They were meeting at the other place I work."
"But how did you know that group was my group?"
"Because on Saturday, two women came in asking for you and said they had dated you in high school."
"Two women dated me? That's like my whole high school dating scene! Heh, heh. Not really....well close....So were they a wild and crazy crowd?"
"Well, normally when I leave work, it's pretty quiet, but they seemed to just be ramping up.'
"Yep, that's them. Bend High School class of 1971; a wild and crazy bunch."
My best friend from high school, Wes, and his wife, Ev, came over Friday night before we left. I'm curious what happened to all my classmates, but not enough to go to a reunion.
What amazes me is that none of them seemed aware at the time of my wraithlike existence as a senior. I was suffering severe depression and avoiding most human contact. But in the immortal words of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer: "In high school, everyone is too worried about themselves to notice what's happening to everyone else."
Anyway, one of the ways that I got over my depression was to put the past into the past and stop thinking about it, and stop raising associations with those down times. It pretty much worked; so I see no good reason to go against that now.
I've gotten over all the anger and resentment I felt at the time. But I haven't quite got over the awkwardness of the whole scene, you know?
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I've never had the slightest interest in attending a HS reunion. I was not miserable in high school, but I never felt like it was the salad days, either. Don't get the mentality.
Not curious about anyone, feel no need to prove anything. I've always just thought "Why?"
A new Brigham Young University study adds our social relationships to the “short list” of factors that predict a person’s odds of living or dying.
In the journal PLoS Medicine, BYU professors Julianne Holt-Lunstad and Timothy Smith report that social connections – friends, family, neighbors or colleagues – improve our odds of survival by 50 percent. Here is how low social interaction compares to more well-known risk factors:
- Equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day
- Equivalent to being an alcoholic
- More harmful than not exercising
- Twice as harmful as obesity
“The idea that a lack of social relationships is a risk factor for death is still not widely recognized by health organizations and the public,” write the PLoS Medicine editors in a summary of the BYU study and why it was done
High school shortens your life.
Cool! So as long as I mingle, I don't need to exercise. Got it. Thanks!
Here ya go, Dunc. http://www.bendhigh1971.com/
Ummm....
Apparently, I'm not the only one looking older.
I have to agree, the suckiest days of your life,... are high-school,
Unless of course your a jock or cheer-leader, then they're the salad days of your life.
I was asked to stay after school for sports and said 'NO'
I was asked to attend grad and receive an award, I appeared for neither,
I also NEVER attended a reunion since, ..
Sort of reminds me of Marc Fabers defn of 'politician', those that do well in grade school recess.
I found 'college' to me much of a continuation of 'high-school', never found a niche until I found real meaningful work ( a job ).
Me too, not much of a 'love life' in high-school, that said unlimited sex after 14+, as there were always 'those' girls that everyone knew that made it clear that a knock on the window 24/7, .. but never thought much to talk to one, what would you talk about? Didn't have my first girlfriend until 18, I consider a girlfriend as a woman I could spend more than 15 minutes a day with. ( Hey I grew up in EAST-LA in the 1950's, it was NOT Mayberry :] )
I do have to admit I started college at 14, and really didn't have anything in common with anyone. There were jocks, stoners, greasers; but there were really all the same. The 'nerds' or intellectuals themselves were in general highly competitive and really not that bright.
Over the last 50+ years I have met back with a few from those days, and in general they're just as boring now as they were then.
Meeting exceptional people is not common. Success in career is always done by a prodigy. People who do really well always are exceptionally bright children. Ergo they don't really mesh in, and in general in public school, then and now, its all about "lowest common denominator'.
As you proceed through life and raise in work and school and money, you get to meet people who you actually can have shared value and experience.
Loving the high-school years has nothing to do with alpha-male or introvert/extro, ... I really think that those who loved high-school, are all losers later in life :) .. Virtually every successful person I have known in 'high tech' has the same story, they studied most of the time when they were young, and didn't bother with the low quality social life, later in life, they had plenty of money, and all the high-quality women they wanted. In every society I know, a man with money and/or a good job, in general NEVER has a problem finding a social life.
On the other hand almost every jock I know from high-school, and their cheerleader girlfriends were fat and washed out alcoholics within 5 years post HS.
GOLD over 1850 today,
It's sad to see GOLD having gone 'parabolic'.
Be very careful.
DOW/GOLD ratio, should be approach unity very soon, historical bellwether.
Trouble today is where to put 'money' as everything will continue to be de-leveraged. ( sold off to pay for food )
Not long ago GOLD was $400, soon it will be $2,000 that's a 500% ROI, in a very short-time. Attracting lots of fools, reminds us all of the Bend RE bubble? From 1998->2007 EH? Today fools can quit their job, and borrow $$$ cash from USBANK at 3% and BUY gold and make a living, just like flipping homes back in 2005 in Bend. Deja-Vu, ...
THE END IS NEAR BOYZ, ... like marge used to say, booze, bullets, and beans.
USA manufacturing index now 'negative'. Depression 2011 Black Friday
..............> 19SEP2011 UK-TELEGRAPH 'BOND MARKET MORGUE'
Panic flight to safety has pushed the yield on 10-year US Treasuries below 2pc for the first time in American history, exceeding the extremes of the Lehman crisis and the banking crash of the 1930s.
Investors scrambled to buy the bonds of strongest industrial states on Thursday on fears of a double-dip recession on both sides of the Atlantic and a European banking crash, driving down their returns to investors. German yields fell to 2.08pc and Switzerland's 3-month rates have turned deeply negative.
Markets were stunned by a plunge in the manufacturing index of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve to minus 30.7 in August from plus 3.2 in July, one of the most violent falls ever recorded.
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