My childhood friend, Larry Zavala, asked if I was going to our high school reunion and sent me a link to the reunion Facebook page. After perusing it I was reminded of a time when (this will come as startling news to my kids) I was even less cool than I am now.
Three quarters of the U.S. population was attending Eastwood High School back then. There was talk of secession and using “Everybody Wang Chung Tonight” as our national anthem but on the eve of the revolution there was a big kegger out at Red Sands and the next morning, instead of revolting, everyone just slept late and went out for Chico’s or menudo.
On our senior shirt they used my middle name, Chad, which I’m pretty sure is wrong because my sister, Johnna, always called me Chadwickedy and who would know your middle name better than your sister?
After graduation I saw a picture of our valedictorian, Gordon Gaenzle, riding a giant seahorse. Or maybe it was a normal sized seahorse and Gordon shrunk after high school. Either way, it made sense because he looked California before that was a thing. It was a drawing in a comic book but it looked like him, so I’m pretty sure Gordon went on to become Aquaman.
Curtis Devore was also brilliant and in the top three or something and in my brush with greatness, we sat at the same table in 7th grade science, along with Kenneth Black and Brian Bailey. At that time Curtis already knew he wanted to become an aeronautical engineer. Kenneth wanted to be a botanist and Brian wanted people to stop calling him Beetle.
Our teacher, Ms. Hotstuff, was a local model and two days before the end of school, Jimmy Cojones walked up to her desk and tore open her blouse and then tore out the door. The class sat there in stunned silence, boys memorizing every detail of the pattern on her bra. Ms. Hotstuff stood up, pulled her shirt together and walked out, head held high knowing that she, and Jimmy, had just become legends for very different reasons.
Curtis did become an aeronautical engineer and at the invitation of Eastwood’s current principal, Mrs. Smith, I served as Eastwood’s “Principal for a Day.”
I think that will suffice for pretending to be someone that I’m not, so I won’t be attending the reunion.