Class Reunion
Tonight, in beautiful Decatur, Illinois, the 20th Reunion of MacArthur High School's class of 1985 will take place, and I won't be there.
Other than the fact that it's over 6 hours away, and occurring at a bad time (busy at work, home, etc with other responsibilities that make such travel a gruesome adventure), I'm not fond of reunions. True, there are a few good friends I'd like to see again, but for the most part, I'm confortable with everyone there remembering me as I was...even though I'm not much different now. Heck, I'm so normal these days, in comparison...
My family relocated to Decatur from Freeport, Illinois, in the summer of 1983. When I moved there, my life definitively changed. Freeport was a very small, rural, and marginally oppressed town of about 27,000 back in 1983, and still is today. Until that summer, I had lived in Freeport since 1975 and despite the gross distance from relative civilization, my formative years there were spent hounding the local record shops for discs that 'nobody else would buy' and being the first (along with my friend and band-mate Mark Frazier) to have a spiked hair-do. We knew nothing of the brand new MTV and had never been to a punk rock show, but still listened to CRASS and the DEAD KENNEDYS in large amounts at high volume. I felt nothing less than stifled there, and realized this when I found myself reading Conan books alone in the woods and canvassing the local public library to carry Talking Heads LPs while cutting out articles about Gary Numan and Wazmo Nariz from their seldom-perused Rolling Stone collection. We had to travel to Rockford, IL (30 miles away, and difficult to persuade parents to drive there) to visit more auspicious record stores and purchase magazines such as Trouser Press and Creem.
Decatur in 1983 was a breath of fresh air, despite the fact that I was so nervous about moving I manifested my fear physically in the form of severe nausea and diarrhea. I could walk 3 miles to the Co-op record store, where upon entering, would hear the newest Captain Sensible LP on the hi-fi and could purchase the first album by the Smiths...Decatur at over 100,000 people was a paradise of adjusted civilization for me. The best part of it was, I left my past in Freeport behind me...nobody knew anything about my 'quirky' childhood, or passed judgement on my 'bizarre' taste in music or the spiked hair-do. Truth is, only the guys in Voc-Ed made fun of my hair, and for the first time in my life girls were interested in me more than I was in them, a complete reversal of my 'dating' life in Freeport.
Over the next couple of years, the ruralism of Decatur began to raise its head, and eventually, I was only marginally happier there than I was in Freeport...but the relative civilization comparison stood strong, and when I left for college in 1985, my exposure to alternative culture was ten-fold of that which I stood to experience in Freeport.
So, a toast to my good friends in Decatur...I do miss you all, and look forward to a day in the future when we can meet head-to-head and remember road trips to Champaign, IL and fitting 8 people in a 1976 Ford Pinto...until then, this is where I am now and I don't feel right 'going back."
Other than the fact that it's over 6 hours away, and occurring at a bad time (busy at work, home, etc with other responsibilities that make such travel a gruesome adventure), I'm not fond of reunions. True, there are a few good friends I'd like to see again, but for the most part, I'm confortable with everyone there remembering me as I was...even though I'm not much different now. Heck, I'm so normal these days, in comparison...
My family relocated to Decatur from Freeport, Illinois, in the summer of 1983. When I moved there, my life definitively changed. Freeport was a very small, rural, and marginally oppressed town of about 27,000 back in 1983, and still is today. Until that summer, I had lived in Freeport since 1975 and despite the gross distance from relative civilization, my formative years there were spent hounding the local record shops for discs that 'nobody else would buy' and being the first (along with my friend and band-mate Mark Frazier) to have a spiked hair-do. We knew nothing of the brand new MTV and had never been to a punk rock show, but still listened to CRASS and the DEAD KENNEDYS in large amounts at high volume. I felt nothing less than stifled there, and realized this when I found myself reading Conan books alone in the woods and canvassing the local public library to carry Talking Heads LPs while cutting out articles about Gary Numan and Wazmo Nariz from their seldom-perused Rolling Stone collection. We had to travel to Rockford, IL (30 miles away, and difficult to persuade parents to drive there) to visit more auspicious record stores and purchase magazines such as Trouser Press and Creem.
Decatur in 1983 was a breath of fresh air, despite the fact that I was so nervous about moving I manifested my fear physically in the form of severe nausea and diarrhea. I could walk 3 miles to the Co-op record store, where upon entering, would hear the newest Captain Sensible LP on the hi-fi and could purchase the first album by the Smiths...Decatur at over 100,000 people was a paradise of adjusted civilization for me. The best part of it was, I left my past in Freeport behind me...nobody knew anything about my 'quirky' childhood, or passed judgement on my 'bizarre' taste in music or the spiked hair-do. Truth is, only the guys in Voc-Ed made fun of my hair, and for the first time in my life girls were interested in me more than I was in them, a complete reversal of my 'dating' life in Freeport.
Over the next couple of years, the ruralism of Decatur began to raise its head, and eventually, I was only marginally happier there than I was in Freeport...but the relative civilization comparison stood strong, and when I left for college in 1985, my exposure to alternative culture was ten-fold of that which I stood to experience in Freeport.
So, a toast to my good friends in Decatur...I do miss you all, and look forward to a day in the future when we can meet head-to-head and remember road trips to Champaign, IL and fitting 8 people in a 1976 Ford Pinto...until then, this is where I am now and I don't feel right 'going back."
posted by Stevo at 8:42 AM
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